Music Director Ward Stare and the Rochester Philharmonic
Orchestra on Thursday drew from their strength for interpretation with the
music of Samuel Barber, delivered what is sure to be a season highlight from
Ralph Vaughan Williams, and turned to the new with contemporary composer
Patrick Harlin.
The first thing you notice about Harlin’s
“Rapture” are the curious fragments of the whole — the skirl of a muted
trumpet, the sharp, up-bow syncopation in the violins, a restless motive for
two flutes. It all created a dichotomy of anxiety and anticipation: a
contradictory atmosphere that gives the listener a sonic representation of “The
Rapture,” named for the intense emotional moment experienced by deep-cave
divers with an overwhelming desire to escape. Harlin
utilizes a dazzling, diverse set of orchestral colors, which made for a vivid,
“high-definition” experience. There was a gradual yet momentous buildup to a
frenzied and ecstatic climax, and suddenly the piece ended.
I was left wanting more of Harlin’s
music — about 20 minutes or so, actually. While this was the first time a work
by the 31-year-old composer has been played by the RPO, here’s hoping that a
more long-form symphonic piece will appear in a future season.
Compared to the other two Barber works performed by the RPO
this season — “Adagio for Strings” and the Violin Concerto — Symphony No. 1 is
the composer at his darkest, his most unsettling. The sound was at once savage
and refined.
The RPO seems destined for the music of Barber, and vice
versa. The players have consistently brought their A-games to his compositions,
with a distinct, rich tone and intense phrasing. An errant French horn in the
symphony’s final seconds was unfortunate, but it didn’t detract from the
totality of the piece.
Pairing Harlin and Barber in the
first half was a brilliant stroke of programming. With a flurry of bold
gestures from the individual instrument groups all vying for attention before
converging for a simple yet emphatic motive, the “Rapture” and Symphony No. 1
are kindred spirits.
“Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis,”
by Vaughan Williams, begins with a singular, hypnotic quality of the central
theme. The resulting swaying feeling was a bit like being rocked in a cradle,
or sailing an endless ocean. Stare stretched that theme into one tender phrase
as the string orchestra emitted sumptuous timbres. A smaller, nine-person
ensemble situated toward the back of the stage perfectly captured a sound best
described as a centuries’ old legacy being unearthed and remembered — it’s faded,
but somehow all the more engrossing because of it.
“Fantasia” was undoubtedly the understated revelation of the
entire program: luscious textures, a profundity of focus on the part of the
players, and a freshness of interpretation that can only come from a place of
reverence.
The evening came to a close with Richard Strauss’s “Four Last
Songs,” with soprano Erin Wall as soloist. Using her tightly wound vibrato, the
singer achieved a bright and lean upper range. These qualities helped to
balance the melancholy of the songs’ texts. Without the lighter vocal timbre,
Wall’s performance could have succumbed to melodrama.
In “September,” the second of the songs, the orchestra could
have been slightly quieter so that the vocalist could emerge more prominently
in the musical foreground. Overall though, Wall expertly evoked the pervasive
pathos of “Four Last Songs,” casting a wistful look at the past as the end
approaches. Strauss has captured the bittersweet moment in which the nostalgic
illusion of perpetual youth is wed to the present reality of mortality.
There is a lot that could be said about this program. Fans of
what Stare and the RPO have accomplished this season — in terms of establishing
ensemble unity, bolstering the brass section, and forging a new identity — will
not be disappointed.
This article appears in Mar 16-22, 2016.
