A peaceful Requiem pairs with
powerful Shostakovich
CONCERT REVIEW
By Jim Carnes
Sacramento Bee Writer
Shotakovich: Symphony for Strings
Mozart: Requiem
Karine Eva Darrah, Soprano
Amy Burgess, Alto
Robert Johnson, Tenor
Philip Carey, Bass
Sacramento Chamber Orchestra
Choir of St. Cecilia
Zvonimir Hacko, Conductor
The final concert of the Sacramento Music Society's 2002-03 season, featuring the Sacramneto Chamber Orchestra and the Choir of St. Cecilia at Sacramento's First United methodist Church on Saturday night, was a combination of old and relatively new, familiar and not-so-familiar masterworks.
The newer piece was Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony for Strings, originally written as Strings Quartet No. 8 and later transcribed for chamber orchestra and renamed "Chamber Symphony." All are names for teh same piece, an elegant, often-desparing comment on the horrors of World War II. The symphony, written in 1960, was presented as part of the sacramento Chamber Orchestra's "Beethoven's of Our Time" concert series exploring the music of contemporary masters.Before the concert began, conductor Zvonimir Hacko discussed the inspiration for the symphony (a visit by the composer to Dresden and his horror at the devastation) and illustrated its dominant motif, the composer's musical signature (D-E flat-C-B). The musicians played the theme in the vairous forms it assumes throughout the piece.
The performance that followed was a haunting interpretation of the symphony that progresses through five movements from reflection to agitation and distress, ending in something near despair.
The Symphony for Strings has been called a shocking composition -- personal, emotiona, almost hopeless. A steady rhythm from the contrabass suggests a heartbeat that grows weak and dies. Another movmeent has deep cellos laying a somber line while violins slash above them, shrieking.
Cellist Leo Gravin and Ionut Zamfir and viola players David Thorp and Glenn Nayden were especially fine, although all 15 members fo the orchestra string section played superbly.
The evening's more familiar piece was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Requiem," perfomred by the orchestra and choir under Hacko's direction. Horns, timpani
Before the concert began, conductor Zvonimir Hacko discussed the inspiration for the symphony (a viti
to assign Maldonado some of the credit for the level of revelation the performance achieved. He stood at the concertmaster's desk, right behind Ritchie, and now and then collaborated in leading the playing with the tiniest and most necessary gestures.
Several other wonderful, brief passages included exchanges between Ritchie and the superb leading cellist, Joanna Blendulf, passages made memorable by Vivaldi for certain moments of rhythm and harmony for the two instruments.
One thing the performance made you realize more than ever was why each of three-movement sections is called a concerto.
Otherwise, this was a chamber performance in the classic (and original) manner, with almost no "conducting" as we think of that act and with the players standing. Except there was on passage in "Autumn," the adagio called "The Sleeping Drunkards" in the program, when Ritchie turned his back to the audience and conducted his colleagues, very delicately, in the conventional manner.
Delicacy was one of the hallmarks of Ritchie's playing. He can tear into one of Vivaldi's many storms and their threatening preludes as heartily as the next virtuoso. Details like the chattering teeth of winter cold were easy for him. But he also provided a world of refined sensitivity for the shading of Vivaldi's folksy musical pictures. He and his companions were interested in the whole work of art.
The program listed few of the details of Vivaldi's descriptive poems, which D. Kern Holoman, in his invaluable "Evenings With the Orchestra," suggests may have been written by Vivaldi himself. Having them handy helped to appreciate what Ritchie and his colleagues were doing -- and occasionally not doing -- with them.
The first half of the program was also a promise of good Baroque things to come. It opened with a fine, bracing, spirited performance of Bach's great cantata No. 51 for soprano and high trumpet, "Jauchzet Gott in Allen Landen," sung in pure, strong tones by Susan Montgomery-Kinsay with Joyce Johnson Hamilton on clarino (a high trumpet). Its final Alleluia, the soprano showed, is one of the great Alleluias of all time. Blendulf shone in the cello obbligato to the second Aria.
Zvonimir Hacko was the conductor in this piece, and also for Handel's Concerto Grosso opus 3, No. 2 in B flat, for which four wind players joined the strings. Maldonado was in the concertmaster's chair.
Winter Festival of
Classical Music
The Lost Angeles Baroque Orchestra, with Zvonimir hacko conducting and Gregory Maldonado as violin soloist, will perform Telemann's Concerto Grosso in D and Bach's Brandenburg Concertos No. 2, 4, and 5 at 8 tonight in the Westminster Presbyterian Church, 1300 N St. $12-45. (916) 332-3989.three pianists, was well done.
December, 1997
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