If you didn't like what you were hearing Saturday night at the Michigan Theater, you had to wait more than the regulation five Michigan minutes for the "weather'' to change. But few patrons would have complained as the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra wound up its season with a 1976 U.S. bicentennial commission, two easy-listening gems for clarinet and orchestra, and Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67.
The orchestra, under its music director, Arie Lipsky, was at the top of its game throughout the evening. The violins did their usual yeoman job under Concertmaster Aaron Berofsky (some stridency at the opening of the Beethoven aside), but it was the lower strings - celli, especially - and the winds and brass that made the most indelible impression with strong, nuanced playing.
If the Beethoven, which constituted the program's second half, was an ideal way to end the season, it was also a risky proposition. Yes, the Mahler "Resurrection Symphony,'' with which the orchestra triumphed at Hill last season, was a bigger challenge, but for familiarity - among classical-music lovers and the general populace alike - the Mahler cannot touch this iconic Beethoven symphony.
So the A2SO was playing the Beethoven for an audience of people who "know how it goes,'' from other live performances by orchestras lesser and grander, and from CDs. I'd say that was no problem Saturday; under Lipsky's baton, it delivered a fresh, forward-moving performance that packed power and punch along with great orchestral color, sensitive dynamics and moments of affecting lyricism. Lipsky's tempi were brisk, bordering at times on breathless, with a few details lost in the hurry, but it was more than a fair exchange for the propulsion of the performance, the sense that phrases were interconnected, leading inevitably one to the other. Nothing stood alone.
The concert that ended with the familiar refreshed began with the unfamiliar revealed: Paul Fetler's "Three Poems by Walt Whitman,'' with Thomas Blaske joining the orchestra as narrator and Fetler, now 86, in the audience along with his wife, Ruth, to hear the performance.
Listening to Fetler's music for the first time, I had the curious impression that the poems, which of course inspired the work, were brought into being by the music, rather than the other way around. That's a tribute to Fetler's writing and orchestration in this three-movement work, which begins with night music for Whitman's "I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,'' continues with the dominating din of brass, drums and percussion for "Beat! Beat! Drums! - Blow! Bugles! Blow!,'' and concludes with "Ah, from a little child,'' with chorale-like string quartet writing (on violin, Berofsky and Barbara Sturgis-Everett; viola, Yizhak Schotten; and cello, Sarah Cleveland).
It was to guest clarinetist Eli Eban that attention turned to conclude the program's first half. First came Debussy's "Premiere Rhapsodie for Orchestra and Clarinet'' and then Weber's delightful and virtuosic "Concertino for Clarinet and Orchestra,'' Op. 26. The Debussy, despite Eban's beautiful tone, seemed a bit pallid, but the Weber was a delight from the first notes and a great conclusion to the first half of a concert that made good on its promises to audience and composers alike.
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©2002-2008
Ann Arbor Symphony
220 E Huron St., Suite 470
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
(734) 994-4801
