The Hopkins Symphony Chamber Orchestra performed another great chamber concert last Sunday. A sizable audience filled the intimate Second Decade Society room in the Mattin Arts Center.
The first half of the concert showcased several short pieces for solo piano and a viola-cello duet, while the second half was devoted to Maurice Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro Harp Concerto and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor.
Though not spectacular, the concert was well-played and very entertaining, as good as could be expected for a mid-semester performance.
The first half of the concert — the pieces of which were not advertised prior to the performanced itself — seemed hastily put together to lengthen the entirety of the show. The pieces were disparate and failed to fit well together.
The first pieces were two short Schumann miniatures, played by Hopkins Symphony Orchestra conductor Jed Gaylin.
Gaylin openly admitted he had been asked to play the piece with very short notice, and it sounded that way. The music was still good — as Schumann tends to be — but it did not make for an impressive opening to the concert.
Following Gaylin was a duet by Malinda McPherson (viola) and Philip Wolf (cello), playing the first movement of a Duo for Viola and Violoncello by Walter Piston.
This duet was the best of the shorter pieces, as McPherson and Wolf are very talented performers who work well together.
The Piston piece was fresh and interesting, a heavily contrapuntal piece that was somewhat modern and chromatic, but neither dissonant nor hard to listen to.
The last of the shorter pieces was Liszt’s Transcendental Etude No. 10 in F Minor, a solo piano piece played by Hyun-Sun Seo.
Seo is a very talented performer as well, and played the extremely difficult piece impeccably. However, the piece was interesting more for its difficulty than for any musical reason.
It consisted of little melody and many embellishments. Particularly coming after the Piston, it sounded like a cacophony of scales and arpeggios. It seemed that such a piece did not belong in this performance.
It was only after intermission that the concert really began, with a rendition of Ravel’s Harp Concerto. Iraida Poberezhnaya played the harp, and did so wonderfully.
The orchestra was no less impressive, however, and performed admirably under the baton of Vladimir Lande.
The piece opened with woodwinds, followed by the other voices entering one by one.
The harp accompanied the orchestra with broken chords and multi-octave strums (glissandi), embellishments that are long-standing staples of the harp, and for good reason.
The harp’s role for most of the piece was primarily of harmonic accompaniment, with only a few short solos.
The harp being a quiet instrument, its solos were intimate moments, and they sounded beautiful in the small room. The orchestra’s accompaniment was subtle but lovely.
The orchestra carried the melody for most of the piece, but at the end the harp took on the orchestra’s melody for an extended solo.
When this happened, Poberezhnaya showed off the harp’s power in being able to have the individual notes of the melody vibrate through the thick yet soft texture of the harp’s chords.
An orchestral echo to the harp followed by a cadence of all the instruments together punctuated the piece.
Whereas the harp concerto was soft and intimate, the Mozart Piano Concerto established quite quickly that it was anything but.
The work started off dark and strong; brass instruments and percussions, which were absent in the harp concerto, accentuated the strength.
The power of the Mozart piece was made all the greater by its contrast to the previous pieces in the concert, and sounded downright frightening.
Just as suddenly, however, the piano took over with a much more intimate melody, played to perfection by Marika Bournaki.
The dialogue between piano and orchestra continued throughout the piece, each piano solo ending with the boom of the timpani taking over, handing the melody to the orchestra.
The second movement featured a slower, more romantic melody, with thinner texture and more ability to appreciate the individual notes of the music.
This movement had much emphasis on the piano, with the orchestra for the most part merely accompanying Bournaki.
The final movement returned to the strength of the first, featuring constant interplay between the piano and orchestra and ending with a final joint cadence.
The orchestra played all pieces well, and the concert was entertaining. But we’ve seen better from the HSO.
The orchestra wasn’t dazzling. For the central pieces, it played concertos in which it was the accompaniment to the soloists.
Most likely the HSO is busy preparing for its Symphonic Concert on April 17, in which it will really show off its overall capabilities.
The orchestra will be playing Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, a technically difficult but epic work which should demonstrate what the orchestra can do with pieces that are worthy of its skill.
