When I was a child, concert music ‹ classical music, if you will ‹ could often be heard to be referred to as ³long hair music,² and the stereotypical concert musician was a cadaverous fellow (and except for lady singers with horned helmets, it was always a man) with a huge mane swept back from his brow.
In the days of Ozzie Nelson, that alone was enough to prove the oddness of classical music and musicians. But besides the hair, they always had really rich accents ‹ maybe German or Italian and sometimes French or Russian.
But never was it contemplated in the popular mind in those distant days that a classical musician might be a composer. Fifty years on, that¹s all changed, and on Saturday night, the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra gave us a sumptuous helping of purely American concert music.
First off was Leonard Bernstein¹s ³Overture to Candide,² possibly the most popular, well-known piece by any American composer.
I suppose the Barber ³Adagio for Strings² or Aaron Copland¹s ³Appalachian Spring² might rival it in the favor of the audience, but it stands by itself as an American theater overture. The EPO gave this piece all of its insolence, wit, and cockiness, along with some gorgeous playing by the violas and cellos of the ³O Happy We² theme.
Following a reset of the stage, the orchestra reassembled to play Russell Peck¹s ³Voice of the Wood,² a concertante piece for cello quartet and orchestra. The quartet Kevin Bate, Carrie Cimildoro-Been, Jennifer Wingert, and Ignacio Gallego Fernandez are all members of the cello section of the EPO (Mr. Bate is the Acting Principal Cellist) and, to my ear, they played very well indeed.
It is impossible to single out any one of them for special mention, as they performed at almost every moment as a group, not as soloists, but their sound was rich, balanced, and tight ‹ all the things you want in an ensemble.
The piece itself is a disappointment. Or, maybe, a better word would be a puzzle. With all of the beautiful sounds available to the cello, very few are utilized here. There is a lot of going up and going down the neck ‹ and at one point a very sly portamento played by Mr. Bate ‹ but all in all, this didn¹t capture my attention or give me much satisfaction as a listener.
Which is not to say that there weren¹t some very pretty sounds in the piece.
One particular section in the middle had all of the string playing low, playing fast and as tense as a coiled spring. But it didn¹t last. The four cellists sounded fine, but I can¹t imagine any of them will want to include this piece in their permanent repertoire.
The evening ended with the Symphony No. 3 of Aaron Copland, a symphony which I love a lot but had never heard in live performance before.
This work is most familiar to audiences as the symphony which includes Copland¹s ³Fanfare for the Common Man² as the basis for the final movement, and from the quiet opening moments to the thunderous finish, the EPO gave a wonderful performance of this American masterpiece which kept me rapt throughout and which ended to the well-deserved bravos of the crowd.
As a final note, it was great to see the hard-working percussion section and tympanist Todd Sheehan given an ovation at the end of the evening.
Between the Peck piece and the Copland symphony, they must have had to empty out the entire percussion locker for the evening. They played snare drums, other drums, bass drum, tam-tam, bells, every kind of percussion keyboard known to man, plus cymbals, woodblocks, a slapstick, tambourine, castanets, maybe some other stuff I didn¹t catch ‹ and they truly deserved their applause.
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2008/feb/21/favorite-composer-cellos-on-tap-for-classics/
The Evansville Philharmonic is one of the many reasons I so enjoy living in this community - This season has been exceptional so far -- If you've never heard this orchestra --or if its just been a while -- treat yourself to this concert.
Mike Smith
Henderson
