The Red Deer Symphony Orchestra started a new season with a Dream, a Fantasy and a snappy, happy Beethoven symphony.
Audience members must have left Saturday night’s Bold and Beethoven concert at the Red Deer College Arts Centre with smiles on their faces, since the RDSO performance was an upbeat affair from start to finish.
The buoyant mood began with Felix Mendelssohn’s Overture to Midsummer Night’s Dream. The remarkable piece, written when the composer was only 17 years old, is as full of fancy and mischief as the forest dwellers in Shakespeare’s comedy.
The fluttery opening, created by quivering violin and cello bows, evoked pixies, fairies and woodland sprites.
Even the donkey-headed character from the play got his due, thanks to some artful notes from the bassoon.
The 15-minute work was a crowd pleaser. Conductor Claude Lapalme later tipped his baton to Mendelssohn’s imaginative flair and technical brilliance in writing the work at such a tender age.
“To have read Midsummer Night’s Dream in German, and to have captured its spirit . . . in a work in which you can hear the fairies, is extraordinary,” he said.
The breezy program continued with gifted piano soloist Corey Hamm, an Albertan who lives in B.C., helping deliver an unusual modern work and time-tested traditional one.
Strangely, Jordan Nobles Idée Fixe concerto ended up complementing Gabriel Fauré’s Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra nicely, despite their vast stylistic differences.
The textural Nobles concerto might have been discordant if it wasn’t delivered so gently.
The piano and orchestra, including harp, vibraphone and marimba, were each seemingly doing their own thing, yet the overall musical concept hung together like opposites attracting.
Hamm, an extremely fluid and graceful player, performed his repetitive piano sections in a musing, dream-like way. Idée Fixe became a contemplation — of what, depends on where your mind takes you.
For me, the plucked violin stings evoked rain drops that struck, then slowly, hypnotically, slid down a windowpane.
Hamm, a founding member of the Hammerhead Consort who teaches piano and chamber music at the University of British Columbia, also brought a keen sense of mood to Faure’s Fantasy.
The expressionistic piece, written late in the composer’s life, is more passionate than Nobles’ concerto, but similarly evocative.
The cascading, traditional tune was somewhat predictable, with more conventional interplay between the piano and orchestra.
But the twist is that Fauré employed a chamber music-like approach but gained additional shades of colour from incorporating so many instruments.
Hamm conveyed both the peaceful nature of the Fantasy, as well as its growing vitality as it accelerates to a big finish.
The second half of the concert featured the RDSO’s riveting performance of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s joyous Symphony No. 8 in F Major.
Lapalme marveled that the Romantic-era composer, who was ever in personal turmoil, was able to write something so “compact and beautiful” as this symphony — for as any writer knows, it’s more challenging to write short than write long.
The 35-minute work starts with gloriously trilling violins and echoing horns, working themselves up to a vigorous frenzy.
The peppy second movement inspired by the metronome, requires the woodwinds and brass to set an underlying staccato tick-tock beat as the strings provide the melody.
This moves into a spirited minuet, then a veritable race to the finish line involving the entire orchestra in a sprightly chase.
What is it that continues to make Beethoven’s music so engrossing? Whether he has written a dark, turbulent reflection of his own anger and melancholy, or a sunny, feel-good symphony such as this one,
Beethoven seemingly has the power to captivate us across the centuries by holding a mirror up to our humanity.
The RDSO did a fantastic job of reflecting his genius, thereby starting the season off on the right footing.
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.comAudience members must have left Saturday night’s Bold and Beethoven concert at the Red Deer College Arts Centre with smiles on their faces, since the RDSO performance was an upbeat affair from start to finish.
The buoyant mood began with Felix Mendelssohn’s Overture to Midsummer Night’s Dream. The remarkable piece, written when the composer was only 17 years old, is as full of fancy and mischief as the forest dwellers in Shakespeare’s comedy.
The fluttery opening, created by quivering violin and cello bows, evoked pixies, fairies and woodland sprites.
Even the donkey-headed character from the play got his due, thanks to some artful notes from the bassoon.
The 15-minute work was a crowd pleaser. Conductor Claude Lapalme later tipped his baton to Mendelssohn’s imaginative flair and technical brilliance in writing the work at such a tender age.
“To have read Midsummer Night’s Dream in German, and to have captured its spirit . . . in a work in which you can hear the fairies, is extraordinary,” he said.
The breezy program continued with gifted piano soloist Corey Hamm, an Albertan who lives in B.C., helping deliver an unusual modern work and time-tested traditional one.
Strangely, Jordan Nobles Idée Fixe concerto ended up complementing Gabriel Fauré’s Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra nicely, despite their vast stylistic differences.
The textural Nobles concerto might have been discordant if it wasn’t delivered so gently.
The piano and orchestra, including harp, vibraphone and marimba, were each seemingly doing their own thing, yet the overall musical concept hung together like opposites attracting.
Hamm, an extremely fluid and graceful player, performed his repetitive piano sections in a musing, dream-like way. Idée Fixe became a contemplation — of what, depends on where your mind takes you.
For me, the plucked violin stings evoked rain drops that struck, then slowly, hypnotically, slid down a windowpane.
Hamm, a founding member of the Hammerhead Consort who teaches piano and chamber music at the University of British Columbia, also brought a keen sense of mood to Faure’s Fantasy.
The expressionistic piece, written late in the composer’s life, is more passionate than Nobles’ concerto, but similarly evocative.
The cascading, traditional tune was somewhat predictable, with more conventional interplay between the piano and orchestra.
But the twist is that Fauré employed a chamber music-like approach but gained additional shades of colour from incorporating so many instruments.
Hamm conveyed both the peaceful nature of the Fantasy, as well as its growing vitality as it accelerates to a big finish.
The second half of the concert featured the RDSO’s riveting performance of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s joyous Symphony No. 8 in F Major.
Lapalme marveled that the Romantic-era composer, who was ever in personal turmoil, was able to write something so “compact and beautiful” as this symphony — for as any writer knows, it’s more challenging to write short than write long.
The 35-minute work starts with gloriously trilling violins and echoing horns, working themselves up to a vigorous frenzy.
The peppy second movement inspired by the metronome, requires the woodwinds and brass to set an underlying staccato tick-tock beat as the strings provide the melody.
This moves into a spirited minuet, then a veritable race to the finish line involving the entire orchestra in a sprightly chase.
What is it that continues to make Beethoven’s music so engrossing? Whether he has written a dark, turbulent reflection of his own anger and melancholy, or a sunny, feel-good symphony such as this one,
Beethoven seemingly has the power to captivate us across the centuries by holding a mirror up to our humanity.
The RDSO did a fantastic job of reflecting his genius, thereby starting the season off on the right footing.
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com