Courtesy of RPO
The highly anticipated 92nd season of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) got underway last Thursday, Sept. 18 and Saturday, Sept. 20 when new music director and Rochester native Ward Stare took the stage. Along with master violinist Midori, Stare led the orchestra in two performances of a dynamic program featuring Berlioz, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky. “Music is communication,” Stare said in his welcome to the audience, “shared emotion, shared experience.” If so, the exuberant season opener was a strong first step in opening new communication between RPO and the Rochester community.
After a rousing rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner, Berlioz’s overture to “Beatrice and Benedict” set an animated tone for the rest of the evening. An accurate notion of the piece’s character can be obtained from an oddly charming anecdote about the composer: During a pre-concert talk on the evening’s program, Stare mentioned Berlioz’s habit of sitting in on the orchestra’s rehearsals at the Paris Opera and yelling at the musicians and the conductor when they made mistakes (This is even more amusing when one pictures the young Berlioz as Stare described him: a zany, truant medical student with an “uncontrollable shock of red hair”.) This tale of Berlioz, along with the “Beatrice and Benedict” overture, proved that eccentricity has its own special sort of appeal. Full of gaiety and sparkling swirls of sound, the piece captures the spirited, bantering romance of its title characters. The RPO’s vigorous interpretation introduced the perfect note of celebration to the night’s festivities.
Following a breathless welcome to the audience from Stare – Berlioz’s vigor had brought out the maestro’s bounding, intensely energetic conducting style – Midori joined the orchestra as the soloist for Brahms’ evocative “Violin Concerto”. The first movement opened with warmth, building the elegant, grand scale of the interplay between the soloist and the orchestra. This concerto is known for not highlighting the solo violin – Midori acknowledged during the pre-concert talk that, despite the technical difficulty she must face, the soloist hardly ever plays the melody. Nevertheless, something earnestly beautiful and deeply moving arises from this collaborative approach – from the beginning, Midori struck the right balance with Stare and the orchestra, emphasizing through their unity the greatness of the music which should be the real focal point of the piece. This partnership continued seamlessly through the achingly lovely tranquility of the second movement and culminated in a gorgeous, joyful blaze with the undistilled courage of the finale. An emphatic and well-deserved standing ovation – Midori returned for four bows – marked the end of the performance’s first half.
The audience returned after intermission for the second part of the program: Tchaikovsky’s monumental “Fourth Symphony”. Opening with the famous brass blasts of Fate, the first movement featured a melancholy, waltz-like theme that recurred with increasing force, evoking Tchaikovsky’s uncertainty and struggle with both his disastrous first marriage and the constraints of sonata form. Here, emotional intensity and Tchaikovsky’s gift for melody provide cohesion as he breaks new ground, departing from the traditions of form. The sweepingly romantic second movement and the tentative playfulness of the pizzicato third movement maintain the underlying urgency that emerges with full force in the finale. Though the orchestra was moving at breakneck speed and the mood was increasingly optimistic, it was not all fanfare: the struggle embodied by the first movement creeped back and demanded that it be given its due. Shivery strings and a theme based on the bright but haunting Russian folk song “In the Field Stood a Birch Tree” grew into the sudden return of Fate – the final and most full-bodied iteration yet, as Stare put it. The listener could practically hear the composer decide that there was no choice but to push forward, and so the piece ended in a burst of triumph. For the second time that night, the audience was brought to its feet.
If last week’s concerts are any indication of what is to come as RPO embarks on this new stage of its journey with Ward Stare at its helm, we can surely expect more insightful performances – music that is fully alive, communicating, and celebrating the struggle, wit, and passion of our shared experience.
Geba is a member of
the class of 2018.
