By Dennis D. Rooney
Guillermo Figueroa conducted the Lynn Philharmonia in its first concert of the season Sept. 25 in the Wold Performing Arts Center, on the campus of Lynn University in Boca Raton.
The program presented one novelty, Jennifer Higdon’s Blue Cathedral, and two staples of the classical repertoire, Tod und Verklärung (Op. 24), by Richard Strauss, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 (in A, Op. 92).
In his several years as the Philharmonia’s music director, Figueroa has often achieved impressive results from his student players, and indeed, the playing of many of them at this concert exemplified the astounding level of execution and musicianship, once attainable only by the best professional orchestras, that is so commonly heard today. However, it is also true that no student players can achieve the polished ensemble, achieved by continuous rehearsal and performance, that are a hallmark of those orchestras.
Blue Cathedral, commissioned by Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music to celebrate its 75th anniversary, is one of Higdon’s (b. 1962) most successful works, having received more than 650 performances since its premiere in 2000. It is a tribute to composer’s younger brother, Andrew Blue, who is represented in the work by a solo clarinet, while a solo flute does the same for his elder sibling. These two instruments weave, in solo and duet, throughout the work’s length of just under a quarter-hour. A large orchestra surrounds them with a highly colorful palette in which percussion is primarily coloristic in its usage, alongside woodwinds, brass, and strings. A few miscalculations passim did not disturb the smooth progress of the performance.
Tod und Verklärung, the fourth tone poem by a 25-year-old Richard Strauss, a significantly more challenging work, threw the Philarmonia’s limitations into sharper relief. The work’s four episodes are a challenge to mold into a convincing whole, and Figueroa was generally successful in doing so. Good tempos, and generally good ensemble lent the performance overall confidence. But balance and intonation were often awry, and trumpets and horns were often both overprominent and blatant in tone.
Famously, Strauss remarked: “Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them,” and the truth of that quip aptly described their playing at times. As a result, the strings were too often undervalued, and the violin solo was paler in tone than it ought to have been. Despite excellent program notes that clearly described how Strauss handled his theme of death and transfiguration, Figueroa insisted on retelling it all in prefatory remarks that were both unnecessary and tiresomely repetitious. Either do one or the other, not both.
Besides, the listener only needs to know the title (and its translation into English), and then to listen to the music and enjoy the youthful composer’s extraordinarily audacious musical invention.
The same is equally pertinent to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, on the program’s second half. And yet, more tiresome prefatory remarks preceded it. If anything, Beethoven requires far less explication than Strauss. Frankly, closer attention to intonation by the conductor would have been far more valuable, as could be heard in the scherzo’s superior agreement of string and wind intonation in comparison to the other movements.