South Florida Classical Review

Victor Huls conducted New World Symphony members in Ravel’s Trois poèmes de Mallarmé with soloist Amanda Crider Sunday in Miami Beach. Photo: Tamara Benavente.

The New World Symphony continued its chamber series Sunday afternoon with a concert shining a spotlight on early 20th-century French music. 

This repertoire has recently become a focus of the orchestra since the appointment of Stéphane Denève as artistic director in 2023, and this newfound expertise was on display throughout the program. 

Two guest artists shared the stage with the orchestra’s fellows. Accomplished mezzo soprano Amanda Crider joined the fellows for about half of the concert, which alternated song cycles with instrumental chamber works. Two of the song cycles were conducted by NWS alum Victor Huls, a former cello fellow who now plays with the Florida Orchestra. The musicians displayed a clear chemistry throughout the afternoon, and it was a pleasure to hear the results of their work together.

Somewhat surprisingly, the concert began from offstage, with a trio of musicians entering the stage one by one from opposite sides playing strains of Aaron Copland’s “As it Fell Upon a Day.” This song, though originally written as a counterpoint exercise during his studies in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, shows Copland as a fully-fledged composer, and prefigures much of his subsequent work.

Crider shone in this piece. Her warm, rounded timbre matched the resonant tones of the flute and clarinet, and her versatility and nuance were impressive, as she captured the many layers of emotional meaning in the text. 

The concert continued with Mobius by the contemporary American composer Jonathan Bailey Holland. Written in 2018 for the Alisios Camerata, the work takes its name from the renowned 19th-century German mathematician and his eponymous strip. Like the Mobius strip, the composition has two expressive sides, contrasting in texture and articulation, which seamlessly flow into one another and back again.

Violinist Diego Diaz, clarinetist Sunho Song, cellist Jordan Gunn, and pianist Shih-Man Weng skillfully handled the work’s jagged rhythms and quick changes of character, the musicians conveying some of the same joy Holland finds in his fascination with the scientific inspiration.

After the Holland, Crider and Huls took the stage along with a brigade of NWS fellows to present the first of three ensemble works from fin de siècle Paris.

Any discussion of French art from this period inevitably touches on the subject of exoticism. After the two massive Expositions Universelles in Paris in 1889 and 1900, artists, especially musicians, became enamored with a postcard idea of “the East.”

It is in this context that Maurice Delage, a student of Maurice Ravel, wrote his Quatre poèmes hindues.  The titles of the movements do not reference the texts, but rather record the cities on the Indian subcontinent Delage was traveling through when he wrote them.  Before the performance of each movement, brief videos were shown pointing out each city on an Indiana Jones-style map.

Delage for the most part avoids clichéd ethnocentric stereotypes that mar the works of many of his contemporaries. The most obvious reference to Indian musical tradition comes in the second movement, “Lahore,” where the cello is used to imitate the distinctly vocal sound of the Hindustani sarod. First-year fellow Mizuki Hayakawa navigated this tricky solo with confidence and impeccable intonation. Huls kept firm control over the ensemble, smoothly sculpting the rarefied timbres with ease. Crider’s expressive range was on full display in the work’s evocative melismas.

The highlight of the afternoon was a stellar rendition of Albert Roussel’s Sérénade for Flute, Harp, and Strings, Op. 30. A contemporary of Ravel,  Roussel has garnered much interest in recent years and Deneve led NWS last January in a performance of the composer’s ballet, The Spider’s Feast. 

Roussel has a penchant for beginning works with normal, almost banal themes, before wandering through ever stranger and harmonically more adventurous territories.  The players handled the frequent tempo shifts masterfully.  Violinist Marissa Weston, violist Joshua Thaver, and cellist Jessica Hong wove the intricate contrapuntal threads of the second movement with the utmost delicacy. Harpist Abigail Kent displayed a stunning range of colors, and flutist Emily Bieker integrated herself perfectly into the ensemble’s swarming textures.  This was chamber music at its finest.

Crider, Huls, and colleagues returned to the stage for Ravel’s well-known but infrequently performed Trois poèmes de Mallarmé. These stream-of-consciousness poems by the French symbolist poet are organized more around sounds and word associations than literal meanings and were a decisive influence on the budding Surrealist movement. Huls guided the ensemble confidently once again, allowing them to showcase their coloristic capabilities. Crider sang with a deep warmth to match Ravel’s vibrant scoring. At times her wide vibrato tended to obscure Ravel’s luminous harmonies. Overall, the performance was captivating, as was the friendly rapport between the musicians on stage.

The concert wound down with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Trio élégiaque No. 1. Written over just three days when Rachmaninoff was only 18 years old, this single-movement work barely hints at his later mature style, revealing instead a deep connection with the music of Tchaikovsky.

The performance was carefully controlled throughout, though the players occasionally added dramatic flair at important moments.  While the youthful energy of the performers was welcome and brought unity to the work, the trio’s placement after the Ravel tended to underline its compositional immaturity and emotional naïveté to awkward effect.

The next chamber concert by the New World Symphony takes place 2 p.m. December 22. Guest pianist Anne-Marie McDermott joins the fellows in a program of Melody Eötvös’s The King in Yellow, Mozart’s Piano and Wind Quintet, and Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. nws.edu 

Jacob Mason is an American pianist known for his performances of challenging, offbeat repertoire. He has collaborated with a wide range of renowned composers and performers. An alumnus of the New England Conservatory and the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, he spent four years of graduate studies at the Hochschule für Musik and Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland.

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