Hartford Symphony Orchestra
Masterworks Series
Program No. 7
BEETHOVEN VIOLIN CONCERTO
DVORAK NEW WORLD SYMPHONY
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, March 18, 19, 20, 21, 2010
8:00 PM - Belding Theater, The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts
Concert Preview, 7:00 PM, Belding Theater
Sunday, March 21, 2010 at 3:00 PM, Belding Theater
Concert Preview, 2:00 PM, Belding Theater
www.hartfordsymphony.org
Tania Miller
guest conductor & music director candidate
Jinjoo Cho
violinist
Reviewed by Donna
Bailey-Thompson
Reviews are subjective, especially mine, because I am more about the emotions generated by the music than I am about picking on a piccolo’s pickability. The years I studied piano did not prepare me to tear apart, measure by measure, the conductor’s interpretation of the composer’s intent. More often than not, I enjoy most of a concert, and sometimes, all of it. In fact, I’ve been teased, “Do you always like everything?"
As the guest conductor Tania Miller walked onto the stage, she exuded an appealing naturalness. I noted how charming she was and pretty too. Her well-organized pre-concert talk focused on the evening’s selections but when I got around to reading the
excellent Program Notes, I discovered that Ms. Miller hadn’t shared anything that we couldn’t read for ourselves. (But, maybe many don't?) She repeated some of this same information before opening the concert with Rodney Sharman’s Scarlattiana, a “transcription for orchestra of Scarlatti’s Sonata in F-sharp minor, K[irkpatrick] 25.” For me to be won over by this dichromatic challenge will take repeated exposure.
Back in the early 90s while a subscriber to the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, the performances of two young violinists impressed me, one more than the other. Midori had dazzling moments, a foundation that suggested she would enjoy a fine career. But it was Joshua Bell’s music emanating from his soul that made my heart sing. At the HSO’s Saturday evening performance, I think it was during the Beethoven violin concerto, for a moment Concertmaster Leonid Sigal played only a few notes with such tenderness that my soul was soothed. I was having a tough time listening to violinist Jinjoo Cho. How much of that was my fault because of the uncounted times I’ve played Anne-Sophie Mutter’s performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with Kurt Masur conducting the New York Philharmonic? I admired Ms. Cho’s ability to tackle the concerto but her playing didn’t sing to me. The Belding Theater was stuffy hot; I had to fight to stay awake. I want to believe that as Ms. Cho matures and continues honing her technique, one day she’ll have absorbed that achingly beautiful score and welcomed it into her interior life.
After Intermission, thanks to air conditioning, the Belding was a comfortable temperature and I settled in to be soothed and blessed by Dvorak’s emotional symphony, so much of it a panegyric to the dynamism of a young, growing America. Embedded within me were fond memories of how much my mother loved this New World Symphony. And, on balance, I did enjoy the harmonies, the plaintive “going home” and the weariness implicit within the broken chords. I did not doubt Ms. Miller’s admiration of the score but where was her passion hiding? What I know about conducting would fill a thimble but that doesn’t stop me from wondering why she didn’t cajole the musicians to contribute sustained depth and fiber and warmth. The HSO is well-equipped to so respond.
Yes, I know: beauty dwells in the ear of the listener. So while fellow concertgoers honored the Beethoven and Dvorak with standing ovations and I went through similar but not heart-felt motions, I wondered if maybe the program had peaked with the Thursday and/or Friday performance and that by Saturday, the audience was caught up in nature’s gift of a suddenly balmy, premature rebirth otherwise known as spring fever.
In today’s idiom, whatever. It was what it was.
