"Everybody Gets a Concerto" Night at ASO

The ASO. Go!

Well, I done gone. And you should too! There are still good seats available for Friday’s (tonight’s) performance – Saturday’s is nearly sold out. At the risk of endangering my high-quality output at work tomorrow due to even less sleep than usual, here is some motivation for you.

The Gandolfi clarinet “concerto” – a two-movement work titled The Nature of Light – is being given its world premiere by ASO Principal Clarinet Laura Ardan. This piece is an instant addition to the repertoire for the instrument: the few clarinetists who make their living as soloists will be all over it. While it is true that there is also not a lot of high-quality concerto repertoire for clarinet, this engaging work is accessible, melodic, and highlights all the assets of the instrument while avoiding some of its pitfalls. In some ways, the work echoes the Copland Concerto written for Benny Goodman, but the effect is much different. Copland used jazz idioms to exploit Goodman’s strengths; here, it is clearly Gandolfi’s voice, recognizable from our choral commission QED and the earlier Garden of Cosmic Speculation expressed within the symphonic tradition. He creatively uses the technical capabilities of the instrument to advance the musical ideas, rather than simply for showy noodling – which is typically the case in solo works for clarinet.

Symphony Hall is kind to wind players when they are out front. Laura was able to employ her unmatched pianissimo playing to great effect, and Gandolfi skillfully maneuvers the clarinet writing to keep its part in a register where the orchestra doesn’t cover the soloist. Mastering the technical as well as the expressive requirements, Laura found the line and structure of this new piece, bringing it to glorious life. Lastly, she looked great in a lovely and flattering gown – almost seeming too glamorous for our old Hall. While there were some first night issues in the orchestra, these should resolve in the next two evenings – it’s not at all an easy piece for them.

Idea: Why not have Laura record the Gandolfi and Copland concertos with the ASO? Related idea: Why not have a series of recordings featuring concerto performances using the orchestra’s principals?

Continuing the evening’s concerto theme, the young Finnish pianist Juho Pohjonen played the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 5 with unrelenting technique.

Intermission!

The second half was Scheherazade. For this orchestra, it’s basically a party piece and there were exemplary performances all round. Robert Spano takes relaxed tempi that skirt indulgence and allow expressive playing, of which there were some wonderful examples including Carl Nitchie’s bassoon solos. But everyone gets a chance in this piece, from the mini-concerti for the various woodwinds, to the brass (who were really great Thursday night), to the second violins, to Scheherazade herself. She appeared tonight not draped in a red sheet and armed with a knife, but as a strapping Norwegian in a tux, playing with his accustomed muscular tone and flawlessly executing the sustained harmonics that close the piece. A loud, sports-type cheer went up when David Coucheron took his bow. Our rock star.

Despite the fact Scheherazade was probably my earliest experience of symphonic music (I seem to remember about twenty 78 rpm records worth of it), and therefore one of the earliest to be abandoned when I learned there were a few other composers and orchestral works out there, I still had a tingling moment in the 4^th movement when the vast blossoming of the full orchestra occurs. But in my old age I also heard at the beginning of that movement sounds that foreshadow Shostakovitch and Prokofiev. Much is revealed in Spano’s interpretation.

I would hazard a guess this will be the best attended series of the season so far. Did the lady in the bed sheet help sell tickets? Maybe a few. But I tend to think it was a combination of Laura Ardan, Michael Gandolfi, the music of Scheherazade, as well as some percentage of people thinking they were going to hear the Prokofiev piano concerto Amy Irving’s character played in The Competition. (“You mean there’s more than one?”). Bottom line – it’s the music, the performers, and the performances that sells tickets.  

So what are you waiting for?  All those ingredients are here, for two more nights only,  Get your (discounted for ASOC) ticket and go!