Review

Sweet and poignant performance

Julie Albers plays Elgar's Cello Concerto under the baton of Jose Luis Novo with the Annapolis Symphony Orchesta. (Photo by Bud Johnson: Special to the Sun)

By Phil Greenfield | Special to The Sun

February 20, 2008

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Annapolis Symphony Orchestra management billed last weekend's concerts as evenings of "Bittersweet Beauty" and, for once, its chosen title actually said something about the music.

The bitter and the sweet are most assuredly in the air whenever Sir Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto is performed. Composed in 1918 in the shadow of the unspeakable losses suffered during the Great War, the concerto is an elegy to sadness with the cello - that most mellifluous of solo instruments - conveying its comforting messages of nobility and uplift as the somber moods and textures roll by. That the piece has become associated with Jacqueline du Pre (1945-1987), the brilliant English cellist who died of multiple sclerosis at the age of 42, adds even further to its pervading sense of melancholy.

Demon playing

More energetic but still mixing the bitter with the sweet is the Fourth Symphony of Robert Schumann, the 19th century German romantic whose inner demons pursued him relentlessly during his remarkable musical life. The first movement of his D-minor symphony says it all: a dark, rambunctious theme giving rise again and again to warm, lyrical testimony to the composer's love for his loyal and loving wife, Clara.

For the Elgar, Maestro Jose-Luis Novo and his players enlisted the services of Julie Albers, the New York-based cellist making her third appearance with the local orchestra. The collaboration was a satisfying one, with Albers' sleek, handsome tone speaking of love and loss with commendable eloquence. This was not a performance to sweep one away with unbridled tonal passion. Neither the soloist nor the conductor seemed geared for all that. Instead, this was an intimate, tightly balanced traversal of Elgar's miraculous score in which the dignity of the approach made the emotions all the more poignant. I'm pleased to have heard it.

More bustling was the Schumann Fourth, with the orchestra sounding ready to pull out the stops and have at it - which the musicians proceeded to do. Novo's big slowdown for the trio in the third movement seemed a bit excessive to me; elsewhere, everything crackled with authority.

Competition

Saturday also provided an opportunity to hear the latest entrant in the orchestra's 2008 composers competition. The contestant was Narong Prangcharoen, a Thai composer whose works already have made it onto the dockets of such ensembles as California's Pacific Symphony, the Grant Park Orchestra of Illinois and the Tokyo Philharmonic. Prangcharoen's entry is "Tri-Sattawat," which can be translated as "three centuries," a musical commentary 300th birthday of the City of Annapolis' royal charter.

Beginning with a formidable bassoon solo which takes the instrument to its upper register to approximate the folk sounds of Thailand, the piece is an imprecation for the good angels to overwhelm the forces of evil arrayed to inflict harm on the city.

May its message take despite the deuced shortness (seven minutes) of the piece. (If this guy wins, perhaps one of his non-quickies could be programmed so we all could have a real listen.) Dollars to doughnuts, though, the good angels were already on alert, thanks to Rossini's bright, fizzy "La Scala di Seta" Overture, which must have had them up and dancing as the program began.

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Sweet and poignant performance

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