South Florida Classical Review

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

The Frost Symphony Orchestra’s first concert of 2025 featured a musical smorgasbord Saturday night at the University of Miami’s Gusman Concert Hall. A talented doctoral student assaying a Mozart concerto, a movement from a monumental symphonic canvass, a diverting new work by a Frost faculty member, and extended excerpts from a classic 20th-century ballet comprised the tasting menu. The high standards that Gerard Schwarz has consistently achieved with the student players were palpable across the diverse stylistic palette.

Multiple competition winner and current Frost doctoral student Mengyuan Li opened the program with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor. Graduate conductor Alberto Bade was on the podium. 

Bade’s forceful, taut direction of the  introduction set the proper dramatic tone for this Mozart masterpiece, with accurate and well-coordinated orchestral execution. Li, a New England Conservatory graduate, is a sensitive musician with a flawless technique. Mozart’s solo writing in this work is among the most demanding of his 27 keyboard concerti, and Li conquered those requirements in an assured manner. Her light, agile touch and rhythmic acuity kept fine momentum. If Li did not bring forth all of the dark undercurrents beneath the surface, her approach avoided stodginess or Romantic exaggeration. 

Mengyuan Li performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20  in D minor with the FSO. Photo: Savannah Methner

Playing Beethoven’s cadenzas in the outer movements, she skillfully navigated the hand crossings and summoned gravitas at climactic sections. Li brought natural, unfussy flow and phrasing to the second movement Romanze and lively energy to the final Rondo. Bade blended the piano-orchestral dialogue skillfully with the concluding D major coda emerging affirmative.

While the stage was reset, Schwarz explained that in Mozart and even Mahler’s day, it was not unusual for a concert to feature a single movement from a symphony or to split the movements of a larger work across the program with other scores in between. It was in that spirit that he led the Allegro maestoso (first movement) from Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C minor (“Resurrection”). 

Schwarz is a masterful exponent of Mahler’s symphonic oeuvre. In 2021, Schwarz conducted Frost players in a powerful traversal of the daunting Sixth Symphony and, earlier this week, he led the Palm Beach Symphony in an acclaimed performance of the Symphony No. 1.

So detailed, lucid and riveting was Schwarz’s reading of this epic movement that it made one want to hear him lead the full Second Symphony. Schwarz immediately established tension in the strings’ attack and resonance of the opening tremolo. Their sound lightened to a radiant glow for the contrasting lyrical secondary subject.  Maintaining forward momentum, he fired up the climaxes, the brass playing strong and firm. He managed to make the quiet, plucked string ending anything but anti-climactic. 

Inner details were consistently transparent. Even the two harps’ lines remained audible despite the heavy orchestration. The musicians were fully up to Mahler’s gargantuan requirements with fine playing across all sections. Schwarz acknowledged both individual players and instrumental choirs in response to the audience’s enthusiastic response.

The concert’s post-intermission half commenced with the premiere of peu de tout, peu de rien, a commission celebrating the centennial of the University of Miami and its orchestra, by Frost faculty member Etienne Charles. The multi-gifted Charles is a trumpet virtuoso, arranger, band leader and composer as well as veteran educator. His brief vignette is a charmer, mixing suggestions of Latin dance rhythms with plush thematic fragments of Ravel-infused fragrance. Lustrous strings vie with acerbic winds in this attractive miniature and Schwarz and the ensemble Brough out its creative invention.

The program concluded with Schwarz’s own compilation of music from Manuel de Falla’s 1919 ballet score The Three-Cornered Hat. In his comments, Schwarz situated the work within the rich legacy of the Diaghilev Ballets Russes. That early 20th -century company premiered ballets with original scores by Stravinsky, Ravel, Debussy, Poulenc, Prokofiev and even Richard Strauss. 

With its flamenco spirit and Andalusian coloration and languor, de Falla’s inspiration stands as unique among the products of that musical-choreographic hothouse of creativity. Schwarz’s suite adds sections of the ballet to de Falla’s two orchestral suites for a primer of the large scale theatrical spectacle. 

From the opening trumpet-timpani fanfare and mass hand clapping and yells of “ole” from the players, Schwarz maintained tight control and evoked the work’s array of Mediterranean hues. In the “Miller’s Dance,” he drew out the perfect combination of hard-driving impetus and delicately tinted instrumental felicities. The violins’ tonal sheen and an outstanding bassoon solo stood out in from the orchestral panoply. The climactic dance concluded a fine display of ensemble cohesion and vibrant music making.

Gerard Schwarz conducts the Frost Symphony Orchestra in the premiere of a new work by Paul Moravec, a suite from Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande, Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole and Gershwin’s Concerto in F with pianist Shelly Berg. The concert take place at 7:30 p.m. March 29 at UM Gusman Concert Hall in Coral Gables.   music.miami.edu

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