GARY SHELDON - CONCERT REVIEW |
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SYMPHONY REVIEW
Passionate and Precise Mar. 21, 1999 By Michelle Dulak
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One of the joys of concert-going in the Bay Area is the discovery, time after time, of musicians (or whole ensembles) of the highest quality, who seem to have been lying low until you stumble on them. For this listener, who had not heard the Marin Symphony before, the sheer quality of the orchestra was a shock. Various East Bay orchestras turn up, occasionally, in the review pages of the San Francisco newspapers--the Berkeley Symphony, the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the Womens' Philharmonic. But I have never seen a review of this orchestra, which (on the basis of this concert, at least) is at least the equal of any of them. Sibelius' First Symphony revealed an orchestra with uniformly skilled strings (all sections got a thorough workout), and a fine crew of brass who distinguished themselves individually, but nonetheless blended warmly as a section. The woodwinds had their difficulties (in the scherzo, in particular, many came to grief). But elsewhere it was the lower woodwinds (especially the clarinets and bassoons) whose dark timbres made the music sound like Sibelius, rather than a cheap Tchaikovsky knockoff. The collective sonority of the orchestra--the eloquent massed strings, the fierce woodwind, the glowing brass--was a fine and a brave sound. Gary Sheldon's conducting, here as throughout, was passionate and precise at once. If the remainder of the program didn't showcase the Marin Symphony to quite the same degree, it was hardly the orchestra's fault. Bartok's Concerto for two pianos, percussion, and orchestra is only a half-hearted concerto. Nearly all the music is already there in the Sonata for two pianos and percussion, on which the concerto is based; the orchestra's commentary can hardly help seeming like an afterthought. The soloists (Heather Creighton and Paul Smith, pianos; Kevin Neuhoff and Tyler Mack, percussion) were a tight and disciplined ensemble, not without touches of humor (as at the end of the finale). Mark Volkert's Psalm, which opened the concert, was written for the Marin Symphony Composers' Symposium of 1998; having won that competition, it received its world premiere here. Volkert's is immediately attractive music, with a harmonic language and a melodic vocabulary close to Samuel Barber's. The work's trajectory--from the exquisite oboe solo near the opening, through the desolate middle section with its disconsolate string solos, to the serenity of its conclusion--may not suggest any particular Psalm, but the path it traces (from simple happiness, through doubt, to a greater and more complex peace) is one around which much great music has been written. This was finely-crafted music, orchestrated with real taste and skill. It breathed the air of fifty years ago, true; but only a churl would take that as a matter for complaint.
(Michelle Dulak is a violinist and violist who has written about music for "Strings," "Stagebill," "Early Music America" and The New York Times.) ©1999 Michelle Dulak, all rights reserved |
GARY SHELDON - CONCERT REVIEW |