Symphony shakes up Civic Center

By Steve Jahrling/The Daily Times

FARMINGTON — San Juan Symphony music director and conductor Arthur Post had warned everyone who would listen that this “Groundbreakers” program would shake up things a bit, and he wasn’t kidding last Saturday evening when the orchestra performed at the Civic Center. The first half consisted of three rarely heard but fascinating pieces by Duke Ellington, American contemporary composer Stephen Montague and American composer Charles Ives, a man so far ahead of his time that he probably met himself coming around the corner. The program concluded with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, a staple of many symphonies today, but truly revolutionary when it debuted in 1809, because it thrust the pianist clearly into the musician-as-hero spotlight. The pity was that Beethoven himself had grown so deaf that he could not perform his own debut. A few stuffy listeners in the audience seemed to squirm through the first three pieces as they awaited the concluding Beethoven concerto. But not everyone, because the loudest applause actually came after Montague’s “Snakebite.” The contemporary piece was full of little surprises. There were slithery strings, a moving wave of dissonance (not unlike The Wave at an NFL game) that described the advance of snake venom through a human’s bloodstream, some foot slapping and even some hissing. It was the only time this listener had ever heard an orchestra hiss at an audience. Not surprisingly, the orchestra seemed to enjoy it. In fact, all orchestral sections apparently had a blast with “Snakebite.” There was a Copland-esque “Hoedown” feel to the fiddle-tune section, and the violinists held back grins as they sawed away like Johnny Gimble on Benzedrine. It was a real crowd-pleaser straight off the bat. Of course, Post added to their appreciation by discussing the piece beforehand, and even gave a preconcert talk about the entire program. He shared Ives’ thoughts on dissonance, Ellington’s pursuit of the spiritual and Beethoven’s sense of grand compositional scale.

Ives’ controlled chaos

Ives’ “The Unanswered Question” was a mesmerizingly atmospheric work that was staged in such a way as to give the audience a mild case of whiplash. The strings departed the stage and set up camp behind the sound reinforcement panels. Post seemed to be conducting only a quartet of reed and brass musicians on stage. The effect was that the hidden strings provided alternately melodic and dissonant sound that washed over the audience, while the soloists on stage made their own contrapunctal statements. The music seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, and highlighted Ives’ flirtations with melody and musical chaos.

And then it happened.

A trumpet from the heavens (actually the top row of the Civic Center) provided yet another intrusion, causing mass neck-swiveling from the approximately 300 listeners below. The effect was, like most of Ives’ work, quirky, moving and oddly brilliant.

Next came “The River” suite by Ellington.

It was composed during the last decade of his life, when it seemed Big Band jazz had fizzled out in popularity and there was no chance at all for symphonic orchestras to ever perform a jazz-based work like this. But they should, and the San Juan showed why. Ellington was a master orchestrator known for his stunning brass and reed arrangements, but in this case he uses strings to impart Middle Eastern flavors, to create a sense of swirling water and to flat out swing. It’s no easy task to get classical violinists to swing hard, but Post succeeded. The fact that he’s a first-rate bassist himself no doubt inspired the bass section, because they played some great, fat walking bass lines that were a joy to hear. The last movement of the Ellington was called “Twin Cities of the Virgin Valley” and it swayed like a spiritual sung at an African Episcopal Methodist Church service. The woodwinds were rich and lovely, and the orchestra played the piece with great depth.

The joy of inappropriate elements

Tenderness is not a description that first comes to mind when you think of Beethoven, but his Fifth Piano Concerto has such moments intersticed between the rampant emotions that fuel it. Soloist Adam Neiman played the pianissimos in the Adagio with a sweetness that contrasted nicely with the grand ascending and descending runs in the opening and final Allegro sections. The only niggle was that the piano, for whatever reason, sounded very tenorish and middy, and lacked the growling bass associated with a concert grand. Or perhaps the bottom end was in there but did not project out into the audience. Neiman’s artistry made up for it, with powerful runs and gargantuan chords that ushered in goose-bump time for even the most jaded concertgoer, built upon an expert substructure laid down by the orchestra. It was only the third time he had played this concerto in concert, Neiman said afterward. “What was revolutionary about Beethoven is that he introduced inappropriate elements in the second movement,” he said. “There’s some real tension between the melodies and their resolution, and some unexpected changes in dynamics.” Neiman has a busy year ahead of him with performances with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in Vail, Colo., and with orchestras in Italy and Germany.

The concert season finale will take place April 26 in Durango and the following afternoon in Farmington. Entitled “Russian, With a Twist,” the program features Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, a Russian dance by Gliére and the world of premiere of Corey Prothero’s “Dance for Peter’s City.”

Steve Jahrling: stevej@daily-times.com