South Florida Classical Review

Last week, Michael Tilson Thomas, founder and longtime artistic director of the New World Symphony, conducted his final concert with the orchestra. Due to declining health, he was forced to hand off his second scheduled week of New World concerts to his colleague and longtime NWS guest conductor Alasdair Neale.

The atmosphere Saturday evening was bittersweet. A video was shown of various NWS alums, each now a member of a major orchestra, speaking about the personal impact MTT had on their lives. Some of them had returned to play with the orchestra. Yet the music was warm and uplifting throughout the evening.

The concert opened with drum rolls on two snare drums placed antiphonally, kicking off the familiar Overture to Giacomo Rossini’s opera La Gazza Ladra. In this short work, Neale showcased his skill as a conductor, using a remarkable economy of gestures. The orchestra played with an impressive taut energy that was never rigid.

The ensemble did encounter a few balance issues in this piece, with the trombone and violins difficult to be heard. Elizabeth McCormack’s agile piccolo line, however, provided appropriate melodic reinforcement. It was refreshing and invigorating to hear a performance of the piece live unburdened by its historical overuse in film.

The concert continued with Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 103. The penultimate of the symphonies premiered in London during his travels there in the 1790’s, the symphony quickly gained its nickname,  the Drumroll”

The first movement was generally effective. The long eponymous drum roll at the beginning set a dramatic tone for the symphony, and echoed the militaristic elements of the Rossini. A few moments were phrased a touch too politely, undermining the music’s forward drive. This did not detract, however, from the solidity of the movement’s construction.

The symphony’s folkish elements came to the fore in the remaining movements. The second movement Andante features two melodies, one in minor and one in major, both in the style of German folk tunes. Neale chose an appropriately bouncy tempo, and concertmaster Archer Brown added some delightful ornaments in a virtuosic violin solo. Neale took the minuet at a brisk pace, lending a decidedly Hungarian character to the movement. This was undermined somewhat by the decision to place the grace note turns before the beat (a hotly debated subject among Haydn scholars).

The finale opens with a horn duet, traditionally associated with rural scenes, before quoting a Croatian folk song Haydn likely heard during one of his many stays at the summer palace of the Esterházy family. The ensemble demonstrated deft skill in handling this movement’s dense contrapuntal lines. It was a rare treat to hear this ingenious work played with such confidence and skill.

The second half of the concert consisted of Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony (No. 6) in F Major, Op. 68. The pairing of this work with the Haydn was fruitful, not only because Beethoven was, briefly, Haydn’s student, but because the works premiered just 13 years apart. Both composers lived during the inception of the Romantic fixation on “nature” and the idealization of rural life, and both played pivotal roles in its musical realization – Haydn in his 1801 oratorio “The Seasons,” and Beethoven in this sixth symphony.

This symphony always carries with it a number of risks. The bucolic character can become monotonous due to the lack of conflict until the fourth movement, and the naturalistic effects in the second movement can come off as a bit corny if not handled with care. 

These were never problems for NWS, whose performance overflowed with genuine sentiment. In Neale’s hands, the first movement’s slowly changing harmonies carried a luminosity that was enthralling. Here the orchestra began to shine, showcasing each musician’s capacity to listen to and react to what everyone else is playing. This is the hallmark of a great ensemble.

Under Neale’s direction, the challenging Andante became the unexpected highlight of the evening. He succeeded in creating a slow but inexorable motion which carried the music along without hurry, laying the scene for a kaleidoscopic array of coloristic effects. Neale stopped beating the time altogethe, for the woodwind cadenza near the end of the movement, in which Beethoven imitates the calls of particular birds, which was particularly convincing. The musicians avoided the kitsch imitation, instead highlighting the immanent experience that birdsong might inspire.

The scherzo was handled with the same exacting cohesion that characterized the Rossini, and the folkish dance episodes were particularly tight. The fourth movement, t thunderstorm was dramatic but not overwrought. 

The finale carried a particularly Viennese lyricism, a heartfelt tenderness and a desire to sing that is so overwhelming that it must be realized. This powerful lyrical impulse carried the music through to its culmination in a chordal apotheosis. With the incorporation of the trombones, in this moment the evocation of pastoral life became a form of worship. Neale delved deep into the heart of this sensitive work, creating a transcendent experience.

The program will be repeated 2 p.m. Sunday. nws.edu.

Posted in Performances

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