Forget Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s “Phantom.” The Knox County Symphony had the real “music of the night” Sunday evening at Rosse Hall in Gambier, and they brought it to strange and wonderful life. The very special evening was marked by the appearance of familiar faces in new roles as well as a new face.
The concert began with Charles Lawson, normally the principal bass of the orchestra, conducting a brisk and glittering performance of the “Procession of the Nobles” by Rimsky-Korsakov. The march shows off the brass section, which started a shade tentatively but soon pushed forward vigorously. Val Vore’s timpani fanfares capped the march proudly.
Next came a first in Dr. Benjamin Locke’s 24 years as head of the symphony, as he appeared as guest vocal soloist in Benjamin Britten’s “Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.” He was joined by Kimberly McCann, making her first but hopefully not last guest appearance as horn soloist, while Lawson again manned the podium.
The timing was perfect, as the light coming in through the windows of Rosse Hall was falling into that uncertain area between day and night as the Britten piece started. McCann played the “Prologue” for unaccompanied horn with rich and lyrical tone, using only natural tones formed by the lips, as the composer instructed, giving the music a bewitching, archaic feel. “Pastoral” followed immediately, with murmuring strings under the tenor’s first entry. In a recent interview, Locke said that he had wanted to perform this favorite work while he still had the voice to do so, but his first entrance could hardly have sounded fresher. Locke sailed a sweet and light tone out into the hall, emerging from the strings instead of trying to overpower them. In the “Nocturne,” Locke and McCann traded exuberant fanfares that would approach ecstatically, then fade away. As the echoes faded, Locke held onto the repeated word “dying,” giving a pensive undercurrent to the lively Tennyson poem Britten set.
As the light outside faded further, the performance moved into darker realms. “Elegy” is a setting of William Blake’s famous poem “To A Sick Rose,” and Britten’s setting of it is haunting, with the horn repeatedly slipping a half-step to a harshly muted tone. It’s the musical equivalent of a sudden sinking feeling in the stomach, and McCann’s playing of those notes, particularly the slow slide from major to minor and back, made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Then, without waiting for a pause, Locke began the “Dirge.” His unaccompanied voice sounded like a tiny, frightened voice in the dark. Then, section by section, the strings entered, circling around him, trapping him as he repeated the obsessive melody. At the peak, McCann’s horn entered, all but snarling. The succeeding “Hymn” was a light-hearted relief, full of mischievous scampering about by both singer and player, tossing off elaborate chain melodies as if it were easy. Despite the haunting moments of earlier movements, Locke wisely saved his greatest intensity for the ambivalent “Sonnet,” which sets a poem by Keats which calls on sleep, though it resonates like something more final. The cellos shone here, navigating some close harmonies with sweet intonation. Finally, from far offstage, McCann played the “Epilogue,” repeating the melodic material of the opening movement. The echoes of the lobby of Storer Hall gave the passage a strange and wonderful magic. As the spell broke, audience members slowly rose for a well-deserved standing ovation.
Intermission should have come at that point. My one serious criticism of this concert is that the planners evidently felt compelled to close the first half with something more upbeat, and thus the full complement of players returned for Johann Strauss’ brief “Radetzky March.” The performance was fast and understated. Ideally, the percussionists should be allowed to bang the living daylights out of their drums in this. Strauss’ poor little pot-boiler almost seemed embarrassed to be there, going “Rah, rah rah,” after Britten’s jaw-dropping masterpiece. Oh, well. As Abraham Lincoln once said, “You’ll have that.”
After intermission, Locke returned as conductor, Lawson returned to the bass section and the symphony’s new Steinway concert grand was wheeled out onto the stage. John Reitz appeared as guest soloist for Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto No. 2.” Reitz approached the solo part very much in the manner of the composer himself, who recorded the work in 1927. Rachmaninoff has so many lushly harmonized passages, many performers wallow in the music, exaggerating it and stretching it out of shape. Reitz would have none of that. He brought fire to the fast passages and a poised reserve to the potentially bloated parts, just as the composer did. Reitz’s balance and his glittering technique also made me think of the great Rachmaninoff recordings of Earl Wild, the master pianist who is now retired and living in Columbus.
Reitz’s playing in the solo opening of the concerto showed off the rich, resonant voice of the new Steinway. In the slow movement, he intertwined the piano part with some lovely woodwind solos, though the violins struggled with intonation in one of the later passages where the harmony keeps slipping sideways into new directions, always a treacherous thing for players. The playful opening of the finale was nicely underpinned by some wryly accented bassoon chords. When the famous second theme came around, the violas were a little overstretched to fill up the hall, but when the whole orchestra joined in at the reprise near the end, the sound was full and rich. Incidentally, that theme provides the nocturnal link for the evening, as a songster in the 1930s made it into a pop hit called, “Full Moon and Empty Arms.” The players scampered through the closing pages and closed the piece triumphantly, drawing an enthusiastic ovation from the large crowd.
