South Florida Classical Review

Gerard Schwarz conducted the Frost Symphony Orchestra Saturday night at Gusman Concert Hall. File photo: Savannah Methner

Late in life, Richard Strauss revisited some of his earlier works, creating orchestral suites from his theatrical creations. His 1947 Symphonic Fantasy from Die Frau ohne Schatten culminated Saturday night’s concert by the Frost Symphony Orchestra under Gerard Schwarz. The beauty and depth of Strauss’s score brought gravitas to a program of lighter works at Gusman Concert Hall.

Strauss’ opera, premiered in 1919, is a grandiose canvas, filled with glorious music but somewhat undercut by a muddled, heavily symbolic libretto. Requiring five heroic voices in the leading roles plus more secondary parts than one can count, and a large orchestra, one can safely say that Die Frau is one opera that will never be seen in South Florida. Schwarz deserves commendation for programming Strauss’s symphonic overview of this sprawling epic. Ranging from Straussian Viennese echoes to Asian-tinged colors, the symphonic canvas is rich and glowing.

The huge orchestral forces included two harps, five horns, four trumpets and expanded winds and strings. Schwarz drew voluptuous and burnished sonorities from the strings that belied the players’ student provenance. Stormy sections were rendered in brisk fashion and the lyrical coda emerged richly vibrant. Through the mass of sound, individual details remained transparent.

The concert opened with Zoltán Kodály’s Dances of Galánta. Like his friend Bartök, Kodály was a collector and curator of folk music, particularly gypsy songs and dances. A florid clarinet solo highlighted Schwarz’s taut reading. He fired up the full ensemble in the  whirling finale to cheers from the audience.

Sibelius’ 1908 Night Ride and Sunrise is one of the Finnish composer’s less frequently performed tone poems. Depicting a ride in a horse-drawn sledge and night turning to the rising of the sun, the piece is replete with color and imagination. Schwarz captured Sibelius’ signature panoramic symphonic portrait in thoroughly idiomatic style. The initial repetitive rocking rhythm was vigorously maintained. Stoic brass chords capped the vision of sunrise.

Violist Miguel Misa was a commanding soloist in Ernest Bloch’s Suite Hébraïque. Bloch was a formidable composer whose scores have largely disappeared from the concert repertoire. As with many of his works, the suite’s three brief movements draw on Judaic themes. 

Misa drew a large sound from his instrument and handled the technical hurdles with skill and aplomb. He shaped the melodic writing with eloquence in long paragraphs. Frost adjunct faculty member Harris Han conducted Bloch’s multi- hued orchestral tapestry with fervor. (Han will become assistant conductor at the San Francisco Opera and Fort Worth Symphony next season.)

Gerard Schwarz conducts the Frost Symphony Orchestra in Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 and Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Naoko Takao  7:30 p.m. April 25 at UM Gusman Concert Hall in Coral Gables.

The Ravel and Shostakovich will be repeated along with the U.S. premiere of the piano concerto If These Walls Could Talk by Jorge Mejia with the composer as soloist 7 p.m. April 26 at the Arsht Center in Miami.   frost.miami.edu

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