By Rae Hunt and Kathryn Olsen
It is always a joy to welcome guest artists to Salt Lake City‘s Maurice Abravanel Hall and this weekend’s performances of Dvorak’s Symphony No. 5 provide not only a guest soloist, but a visiting conductor. Maestro Jiri Rozen helms the orchestra for the entire program, while violinist Randall Goosby closes out the first half of he concert with Max Bruch‘s Concerto for Violin in g minor, Op. 26. Neither of us was familiar with all of the music on the program, but with one reviewer’s favorite solo work on the program and new music to hear, it was bound to be an exciting night.
Rozen opens the program with the whimsically-named Ringelspiel by Ana Sokolovic. The title is a reference to the German word for a merry-go-round and the composition makes it easy for the audience to really visualize it. Sokolovic uses techniques to invoke the mechanical nature of the machine and the musicians produce sounds with their instruments that seem to have never been done before as they replicate such sounds as the grinding of gears and the “heavy-footed” operation of the ringelspiel. The “merry-go-round ballerina” is haunting and lovely and sets up the melancholic tone of the “broken merry-go-round” that closes this five-movement piece.
While the concert is named for the Dvorak symphony that ends the program, we came as two violinist friends to appreciate a masterpiece of 19th-century music. It is a piece that underwent several revisions and Rozen mentioned that Bruch was not happy that this was his most-performed concerto, when his others were sometimes overlooked. The concerto that opens with a legato arpeggio and builds slowly in intensity is an unstoppable force of excitement by the end of the third movement and Goosby was not simply playing the music, but living it. During the orchestral passages, he would turn to the ensemble as if listening intently to another part of the conversation and preparing to join in the debate. The result is that his performance of this solo is more of a blended conversation than many other interpretations of the concerto. He feels every moment of the work and it is so riveting to watch that the audience finds it difficult to watch the rest of the orchestra. Goosby, after accepting a standing ovation, performed a Louisiana blues piece that was toe-tappingly entertaining and amusing while very much in the same virtuosic style that allowed him to triumph in the concerto. The second standing ovation was well-deserved.
Rozen shares a homeland with the composer of the final piece of the night and his introduction to the Symphony No. 5 in F Major, Op. 76 by Antonin Dvorak proved invaluable to the audience experience. The symphony’s opening movement is deceptively simple in its pastoral style and the call-and-response of the woodwinds set a scene in which shepherds are calling to their flocks and their colleagues on pipes/ Rozen mentioned that Symphony No. 5 is considered to be Dvorak’s first “mature” symphony and it certainly earns that title. Amusement accompanies the second movement, since Rozen had pointed out that it opens with the first four notes of Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky‘s piano concerto, which had not yet been performed, much less become a familiar sound to music-lovers around the world. The cellists take charge of the lovely tune that forms the foundation of the second movement while also shining in the scherzo that calls to mind Slavonic dances in the third movement. The finale is grand and, for Dvorak lovers of his later works, this stylistically paves the way for everything that is to love about his style.
Rozen is a fantastically energetic and passionate conductor whose relationship with the orchestra and the repertoire makes it clear that the program is very special to him. The concert itself contains a wonderful variety of textures and techniques that tie the whole program together while each piece utilizes a completely different sound and style. It is a feast of different textures both very exciting and quite lively. One of us opined that, “If I could go back and do it again, I would totally do a repeat.”
The excellent news is that there is one more performance so people of all backgrounds and levels of music appreciation can experience the feast. Hurry to get tickets before the ringelspiel falls silent.Utah Symphony Presents Dvorak’s Symphony No. 5.
Abravanel Hall, 123 W South Temple, Salt Lake City, UT84101
March 3-4, 2023, 7:30 PM
Tickets: $17.50-95
www.usuo.org
Contact: 801-533-5626
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