Geography buoyed by emotion
Audience thrills at Philharmonic's grand musical journey
CONCERT REVIEW
By William Glackin
Sacramento Bee Critic at Large
September 27, 1998
Respighi: Pines of Rome
Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez
Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 in D Major
Angel Romero, Guitar
Zvonimir Hacko, Conductor
Geography and history figured heavily in Friday night's opening concert by the Sacramento Philharmonic in the Community Center Theater, but it was the emotional overtones in the music that made them count. Zvonimir Hacko and his players opened with Respighi's "The Pines of Rome," a famous and popular series of four colorful, skillfully orchestrated vignettes evoking scenes of the city.
Children were at play among the pines of the Villa Borghese in the opening movement; Respighi gave us tunes like their songs, and echoed their general hubbub in the orchestra. Near the catacombs, over a ghostly murmuring of low strings, you could catch the rise and fall of Gregorian chant. On the Janiculum hill, there was night music in the air: A clarinet, or was it a nightingale?, sang over the arpeggios coming from the piano.
At dawn on the Appian Way, a march began very quietly and then traversed a long crescendo; timpani sounds increased and six trumpets flared in the second balcony. "A vision of ancient glories appears" in Respighi's description, "in the brilliance of the rising sun . . . mounting to a triumph on the Capitoline Hill." As cymbals crashed together, you could almost see it. The applause was laced with yells. Conductor and orchestra had done well by the composer's descriptive powers.
Joaquin Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez" is also popular, a favorite with audiences since 1936, but its tunes dance to lighter rhythms and the exquisite expression of the feelings in the music could hardly be in greater contrast to the robust glories of Respighi's tone poem.
Likewise, the composer could hardly have wished for a guitarist more sensitive to, and evocative of, the delicate sentiments of the work than Angel Romero, who now joined Hacko and the orchestra. The warmth and bright spirits of a Spanish fiesta shine through the first movement in the strummed rhythms of a fandango. A tune is developed, but the guitar brings the key rhythm back, again and again, to keep the music dancing and, finally, to end it with a smile.
The second movement was in sorrowing contrast, haunted by a melody from Ruth Stewart's English horn. When Angel Romero's brother, Pepe, played the piece with the Sacramento Symphony here three years ago, he told the audience the story behind the music that had been revealed to him by the composer: of the death of a stillborn son, and the music which had been composed to express the tragedy. Angel Romero, too, played the piece as if reaching into the depths of his own heart. It was a spellbinding moment.
The finale lifts us away to the consolations of living in a happy dance Rodrigo reportedly described as his conversation with God. Not all of these strains are as natural for an orchestra as they are for a guitarist, but the piece clearly belongs to the soloist, and Romero won long applause with it. He responded with a dazzling encore which was greeted by a huge yell of approval.
It's a long way from Rodrigo's sunny Spain to the snowy reaches of Finland where Sibelius grew up, and it's an even longer distance from the lilt and lightness of the former's music to the dramatic landscape of the latter's Symphony No. 2. Fortunately, an intermission helped everybody adjust.
Sibelius always said there was no program hidden in this work, but people keep trying to find it. It's natural in the light of the centuries of subjugation suffered by the independent-minded Finns at the hands of Sweden and Russia. And it came out of the same period as his "Finlandia."
It begins mildly enough, with pastoral strains and a tune that is folkish but is to become important. The music in this first movement, developing strain after strain, avoids excitement but does become very serious. Hacko and his players gave it a welcome sense of action.
A "walking" low theme, played pizzicato in cellos and basses, becomes the foundation for a sad song for the bassoons in the slow second movement. This leads to writing for brass which is sonorous, dark and dramatic, and which emerges as one of Sibelius' basic means of expression in the entire work. At times it's like a low fanfare. And now a series of pauses adds even more solemnity.
A bustling scherzo, on the run, is marked "vivacissimo." To one writer, it signified the rise of Finnish nationalism. In any case, it leads to an exciting finale, in which the brass sounds triumphant themes again and again and a running bass figure gives them energetic support. There's a long climb to a climactic finish. Hacko and the players managed these effects of increasing power and ultimate triumph most effectively. The program was to be repeated Saturday night.