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In the days of records - flat black things that were sort of like CDs, except they had cool covers and better music on them - there was a common practice among orchestras of recording short orchestra war horses for an album with a theme.
For instance, an album called "Majestic Marches" might have "Pomp & Circumstance No. 1", "Entry of the Boyars" and "Procession of the Nobles" on it. I'm probably not the only person who came to classical music by listening to those albums, and I still love the old chestnuts, so I was really looking forward to Saturday night's concert by the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, called "Ports of Call" and featuring music inspired by, or associatd with, foreign destinations.
The opener, Beethoven's "Turkish March" from "The Ruins of Athens," is so well-known by audiences that it needs no description. The EPO and Music Director Alfred Savia gave this odd piece a properly square Germanic treatment and then got on to the next piece, "Escales" (Ports of Call) by Ibert.
Jacques Ibert was an officer in the French Navy during World War I and saw a lot of duty in the Mediterranean. "Escales" is his attempt to convey his impressions of three of the places he visited, Rome, Tunis and Valencia. As Savia noted, this piece used to get played a lot, but has fallen a bit out of favor.
And with good reason. It's just not that interesting of a piece. The middle movement, "Tunis-Nefta" works, with the oboe mimicking its Arabic cousin the raita, and the strings supplying a rhythmically compelling accompaniment, but the outer movements don't hold the listener's attention. The EPO did a handsome job of playing it, though, and there were lots of pretty sounds.
Following Ibert was Louis Moreau Gottschalk's "Symphony No. 2, A Montevideo." This was the first time it has been performed by the EPO and probably the last. It's an interesting artifact, but a piece that throws "Yankee Doodle" into a piece about Uruguay doesn't need to be played often. It has fine melodic content (Gottschalk could really write a tune), and is pleasant enough, but not nearly as much fun as his other symphony "A Night in the Tropics" that Savia led a couple of years ago.
The final piece before intermission, Tchaikovsky's "Capriccio Italien," was just fine. It's a wonderful, light concert piece and the EPO gave it all the garlic in the house. I wish they had played it again. After the Ibert and Gottschalk, it was as welcome as a rainbow.The second half of the concert consisted of three very familiar pieces, Aaron Copland's "El Salon Mexico," Leonard Bernstein's "Three Dance Episodes form Fancy Free," and "La Mer" by Claude Debussy.
"La Mer" was just gorgeous, from the opening pianissimo shimmer of strings with murmuring timpani to the brilliant end. Debussy often mentioned that he considered the art of music to be "the alchemy of sound." "La Mer" is the perfect example of that wizardry, and the EPO's performance of it was wonderful. I imagine this is a tough piece to play, given the constantly changing textures of the music, the extraordinarily subtle colors that Debussy evokes. Bravo indeed.
A digital recording of the concert will air at 7 p.m. April 3 on radio station WNIN (88.3 FM)
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http://www.courierpress.com/news/2011/mar/19/ports-of-call-offers-a-delightful-aural-journey/
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