Years ago, I worked with a busy city editor who would listen for all of about five seconds to a reporter's description of his or her latest story before interrupting with a brusque "Just give me the lead.'' So without further ado, here's the lead for the most recent Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra concert:
It was in with the new Saturday evening at the Michigan Theater, as the A2SO offered Ann Arborite Michael Daugherty's exhilarating "Fire and Blood for Violin and Orchestra'' - a work debuted by the Detroit Symphony in 2003, when Daugherty was composer-in-residence there - with the spectacular 19-year-old violinist Bella Hristova in the soloist slot.
Haydn - the Symphony No. 90 in C Major - was sweet, and playful; Tchaikovsky - the Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 17, "Little Russian'' - was anything but little, at once grand and folkloric. But on Saturday, these works played second fiddle to a stunning young woman in an emerald-green gown standing before the orchestra with her 1655 Amati to give her fiery and sweet all to Daugherty's invigorating and seductive score.
Hristova was born in Bulgaria and is now at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute after training and living through her teen years in Ann Arbor. And Saturday, she must have made former A2SO concertmaster Steven Shipps, her teacher here, awfully proud.
The orchestra, under Music Director Arie Lipsky, also gave a compelling reading of "Fire and Blood,'' a concerto in the catalog of this University of Michigan professor that is proving popular, for good reason, with orchestras around the country.
The orchestra was less compelling - or less consistently compelling - in the Haydn and Tchaikovsky symphonies. The horns, working at full potency in the Tchaikovsky, fell prey to intonation problems in the opening movement of the Haydn; balances were also less than optimal. And in the Tchaikovsky, the opening movement had somewhat the quality of a happy read-through: lots of enthusiasm, lots of sound, and buried inner lines.
The winds - which included the principal clarinet and flute of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, respectively Robyn Jones and Dean Miller - were marvelous throughout the evening. But there were passages in the Tchaikovsky - largely transitional spots - where Lipsky and his players failed to trace much of a line, leaving the music to sag.
On the other hand, Lipsky and the orchestra played Haydn's "When does it really end?'' joke just right in the symphony's last movement, holding their cards close to their vest. And the Tchaikovsky, paired with the Haydn, took on colorings of the same last-movement game: The huge opening sounds like a perfect close, and the orchestra reaches a similarly grand and fervid climax several times before the even bigger final close.
But if the Tchaikovsky was less than riveting at every turn, there was never a moment in the Daugherty concerto - with its sometimes clangorous, soulful, syncopated evocation of Diego Rivera's "Detroit Industry'' frescoes at the Detroit Institute of Arts - when the ear wandered. The first movement, "Volcano,'' has pulsing energy and enormous sweep and drama - and lots of fast virtuoso fiddling for Hristova, who played with drama and energy to match (and with utterly calm mien) as she met the virtuoso demands.
The second movement, "River Rouge,'' gives the soloist (and maybe Rivera's wife, the artist Frida Kahlo) a chance to sing, which Hristova did, with a tone both lustrous and ravishing; the music, with its mariachi band influence, is heartbreaking.
"Assembly Line'' finished the concerto with Hristova as worker and the orchestra as machinery - colorful machinery, at that, whistling, clanking and pealing for all its metallic worth. It was marvelous.
After bows with composer and maestro, Hristova returned for a rhythmically incisive account of a Piazzolla etude, in which she provided all the color and dazzle needed.
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©2002-2008
Ann Arbor Symphony
220 E Huron St., Suite 470
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
(734) 994-4801
