The Peabody Concert Orchestra performed their last concert of the 2005-2006 season last Friday, April 28, and they finished off in style. Their program, while not coherent in style or substance, remained entertaining and a great way to spend a Friday night.
The orchestra, under the direction of Edward Polochick, opened the concert with Leonard Bernstein's Three Dance Episodes from On the Town. In the beginning of the first dance, "The Great Lover, " the orchestra swung between varied extremes of unified movement to a loose, almost frenetic style which made me uncomfortable and afraid that the upper string section may have lost the rest of the orchestra altogether. Thanks to the strong performances of the soloists in the wind section the orchestra became anchored, which helped the ensemble move into a sonorous second dance. In this second dance, "Lonely Town: Pas de Deux," the ensemble showed a better grasp of Bernstein's lush orchestrations. The trumpet and English horn solos in this movement remained particularly true to the overall sense of the dance. The final dance, "Times Square: 1944," opened with a brazen, jazzy clarinet solo, which acted as a perfect counterpoint to the slower second dance.
After a series of rousing applauses, a smaller ensemble moved into what seemed like more comfortable territory, that of Haydn's Symphony No.103 in E-Flat, "Drum Roll." Before the opening, Polochick made a curious decision: nearly right after his entrance and acknowledgement of the audience, he began the first movement, an "Adagio; Allegro con spirito." The quick, disjointed start was a bit of shock, and while it had also occurred before the beginning of "On the Town," the lack of space between applause and the first note was far more shocking when the piece began at a much softer level than Bernstein's piece. While this sudden start may have affected the audience, the orchestra remained unfazed, and the opening flute and oboe blended and complemented the strains of the first movement, signaling a chance for the rest of the orchestra, especially the string section, to relax for a bit after the acrobatics of "On the Town." The rest of the Symphony was marked with the same capable, if not slightly auto-pilot, playing.
After intermission, the string section performed Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings." Here, from a deep stillness, an initially plaintive, progressively resonant sound emerged from the strings. The "Adagio," to me, was the piece in the program that highlighted both the virtuosic talents of the strings but equally laid bare where the orchestra might want to journey for next year's program. While the violas had an entrancing ability to recall voices singing, and the whole ensemble was capable of moments of producing transcendent sonorous light, the build-up and churning of emotions inherent in the writing of "Adagio for Strings," was just not translated inside the orchestra, and as a result, throughout the piece.
After the emotional exhaustion inherent in any performance of "Adagio for Strings," the orchestra switched gears to a rousing romantic crowd-pleaser, Ottorino Respighi's "Pines of Rome." The piece was an exercise in tonal contrasts, and here the full orchestra was at its best. The subdued string passages and muted trumpet calls in the second and third movements were ancipatory of the full, loud march of the last movement, which featured a brass ensemble in the balcony of Friedberg Concert Hall, responding to the ensemble's joyous tones that uplifted and delighted the audience to a well-deserved standing ovation.
