Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 14, 1992 TAG: 9201140296
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
GRUMBLING ASIDE, RSO SHOWS BRASS
The Roanoke Symphony Orchestra brass section should get combat pay for Monday night's session at the Roanoke Civic Center.In brass players' lingo, the first RSO concert of the new year was a "big blow," with the piece de resistance being John Harbison's "Concerto for Double Brass Choir and Orchestra."
But neither Richard Strauss's "Til Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks" nor Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major added up to a free ride, either, especially for the horns.
Roanoke is a town where some people - let's face it - still think Shostakovich is a dangerous radical. So perhaps the fair number of negative post-concert comments about Harbison's piece should have been no surprise.
"Try to whistle that one on your way home," remarked not one but two concertgoers. "Much more of this and they'll have empty seats," said another.
It didn't amount to an insurrection, but it was noticeable on the way the parking lot.
But Harbison's work contained some of the most beautiful new music I've heard in quite awhile. Music director and conductor Victoria Bond deserves credit for programming a challenging piece that, after all, managed to garner respectable applause despite the traditionalist faction in the audience. With a little more exposure, this work could become a favorite even with people who think they don't like modern music.
Harbison had this intriguing comment about his own piece: "I had long dreamed of a piece beautiful but dumb, with nothing much in its head but sound." The "Concerto for Double Brass Choir and Orchestra" does indeed have a lovely surface, though there is enough structure to make the work architecturally pleasing as well. The three movements were conceived as three extended inventions, first on a motive, then on a chord, and finally on a cadence.
Unfortunately, only audience members toward the center of the hall were able to get the full "stereo" effects the composer intended by physically separating the two brass choirs. There were long passages, especially in the final movement, in which phrases were tossed back and forth between the two sections.
For sheer loveliness the middle movement was the winner. There were some especially beautiful solo sections with a hauntingly angular melody, first with two trumpets, then two horns, and then with two trombones. The middle section ended with a fine postlude for tuba played expertly by the RSO's principal tubaist, Charles Krause.
This was not an easy piece, with viciously syncopated passages that required careful counting. In fact, it seemed there were blunders on entrances. But the final effect was strong.
Bond and her players did a creditable job with Strauss' tone poem "Til Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks." Hornist Wally Easter rose to the occasion repeatedly during this piece with the famous horn call that forms the second of the two Eulenspiegel motifs. That same theme, transformed somewhat, gave concertmaster James Glazebrook a solo opportunity in a passage that Strauss marked "liebegluhend," or "glowing with love."
Positioned carefully after the Harbison was the evening's final work, Robert Schumann's so-called "Rhenish" Symphony in E-flat Major. Full of four-square traditionally tonal music, the work got a well-shaped treatment at Bond's hands. This work has some unimaginative stretches, but it's well calculated to appease fans of meat-and-potatoes Romantic music.
Again, it was the horn section who were the heroes in this one, with a solemn Bach-like horn chorale at the beginning of the fourth movement and some gorgeous horn tuttis in the final movement. The second-movement scherzo contained some of the happiest music the RSO has performed this year.