South Florida Classical Review

Jeri-Lynn Johnson conducted the New World Symphony in music of William Grant Still, Julia Perry and William Dawson Sunday afternoon in Miami Beach.

“Transitions and Trailblazers” formed the theme of the New World Symphony’s annual Black History Month concert and William Grant Still, Julia Perry and William L. Dawson were certainly pioneering African-American composers of classical music. On Sunday afternoon at the New World Center, conductor Jeri Lynne Johnson led excellent performances of a fine sampling of their works.

Still’s Festive Overture was the prize winner in a competition for a work celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the Cincinnati Symphony in 1944. A rousing concert opener, the piece reflects its wartime origins in the surging pulse and expansive string themes that recall scores for Hollywood films and newsreels during World War II. Still was a master orchestrator and the New World’s luminous strings and crackling brass gave full thrust to his luxuriant writing.

The other two works on the program were weightier and more serious in content. Julia Perry (1924-1979) had a significant career as a choral conductor and educator. Her 1951 setting of the Stabat Mater is a starkly powerful evocation of the Virgin Mary’s pain and grief at witnessing her son Jesus’ crucifixion. 

Scored for mezzo-soprano and strings, Perry’s musical language blends serialism with lyrical arioso. The second part, in which a poet asks Mary for permission to share her sorrow, is almost neo-Baroque with richly sonorous strings. 

Briana Hunter, who has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, displayed a dusky lower register and powerful top range that rang Mary’s cry of pain through the hall in a thrilling manner. Her dramatic projection and tonal vibrance, allied to  Johnson’s vigorous leadership made Perry’s 21-minute quasi- cantata an emotionally gripping experience. Perry’s music warrants continued exploration.

Dawson (1889-1990) was best known for his many arrangements of spirituals. Both direct quotations of some of these sacred songs and references to the spirit of  these influences pervade Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, his only orchestral work. 

Premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski in 1934, the opus languished in obscurity until three decades later when Stokowski recorded the work with the American Symphony Orchestra. Recently the score has deservedly been receiving an increasing number of performances. Dawson’s three-movement work is a major achievement. It would not be unfair to describe the piece as the symphony George Gershwin may have written had he lived to conceive one.

The first movement (“The Bond of Africa”) opens with a mournful horn solo, a melody that recurs throughout the work in cyclical manner. Filled with thematic invention and deftly conceived orchestration, the initial section leads to climaxes of shattering intensity. 

A haunting theme played by the English horn over plucked strings and harp, commences “Hope in the Night.” In this slow movement, allusions to the blues are masterfully integrated into the symphonic fabric and structure.

 “O Le’ Me Shine, Shine Like a Morning Star” is a lively, high-energy finale, with a palpable scent of jazz. Dawson’s instrumental panorama offers beautiful solos for viola, cello and most of the wind players in the course of the 35-minute span.

To make its full effect, Dawson’s symphony requires an outstanding performance and that is what it received from Johnson and the New World fellows. Orchestral execution was invigorating, yet nuanced, and the many solos were rendered with delicate attention to dynamics and tonal variety.  

Johnson, the founder and artistic director of Philadelphia’s Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra, brought adept pacing, idiomatic fluency and a keen sense of the music’s many changes of meter and color. She should return soon to continue to explore the diverse variety of classical Americana and more familiar orchestral literature.

Stéphane Denève conducts the New World Symphony in Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, the premiere of Anna Clyne’s PALETTE and Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. The concerts take place 7:30 p.m. March 1 and 2 p.m. March 2 at the New World Center in Miami Beach. nws.edu

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