South Florida Classical Review

The Frost Symphony Orchestra continued its season Saturday night with a program entitled “From Darkness to Light,” led by music director Gerard Schwarz. This proved to be one of FSO’s most carefully curated concerts of recent years. The two-and-a-half-hour runtime was the perfect length for an evening focused on Central European works dedicated to exultation.

The concert opened with the Sinfonia Sacra by Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik. Panufnik’s name might be less familiar to some audiences, yet this work is still likely his most performed music, since Leopold Stokowski led its U.S. premiere in 1965. Written to commemorate the millennium of Poland’s Christianity and statehood, the work is built around a medieval chant, Bogurodzica, supposedly the oldest music written in the Polish language. However, references to the chant itself are subtle—the work seems to progress through the unfolding of different textures and sonorities, placing it in the same sound-world as Panufnik’s more familiar compatriots Górecki, Penderecki, and Lutosławski.

The Sinfonia gave the orchestra a chance to showcase the signature sound it has developed under Schwarz’s leadership, which was on display throughout the evening. The thick, heavy brass of the opening trumpet fanfare did well to highlight the work’s religious and patriotic subtext. This was complemented by FSO’s lush, resonant strings; rich, lyrical woodwinds; and incisive, exacting percussion, including impressive solos by antiphonally placed timpani.

Graduate conductor Shun Yao took the podium for the next two works, which included the world premiere of Do the Angels in the Sky Sing to the Moon? by Frost alumnus Devin Cholodenko.

Cholodenko’s work played to the orchestra’s strengths. He experiments with combinations across groups, achieving striking gradients of color. He interpolates between different degrees of clarity and opacity, giving the piece a mesmerizing quality. Shun Yao and the orchestra handled this sensitive scoring with confidence, navigating each dynamic gradient to create an ever-changing kaleidoscope of hues.

Frost DMA student Kevin Knowles was in the spotlight for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58.

Beethoven’s bucolic concerto proved the perfect centerpiece to a concert dedicated to the hymnic and apotheotic. Knowles managed to extract a pearly opalescence out of each note, treating the score with precision and care. Though at times his gentle sound was covered by the orchestra, its delicacy became a virtue in the second movement, in which Beethoven instructs the pianist to play “una corda” throughout, which Liszt interpreted as “Orpheus taming the Furies.”

Knowles’s sound opened up in the Rondo finale, matching the orchestra in energy and brilliance. Once in a while, the orchestra began to fall behind the soloist, but Shun Yao quickly adjusted. Overall, it was a joy to hear a reading of this wonderful work focused fundamentally on the enjoyment of music-making.

Since his appointment as music director in 2019, Gerard Schwarz has made it a tradition for FSO each year to perform one of Brahms’s four symphonies. This year, that tradition has changed, featuring Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in G Major, Op. 88 in Brahms’s stead. The orchestra met this mature masterpiece in peak condition, with rhythmic exactness and control.

The symphony is without an explicit literary program, but a number of elements link it with the pastoral. In particular, the frequent flute solos – indeed, the work appears to be a flute concerto at times – seem to evoke birdsong and rural folk music. Lia Suk shone in these solos, playing with a warm, enchanting flute tone.

Schwarz seemed especially relaxed in his direction of the symphony, only intervening to adjust the already pristine balance of the orchestra. This gave the players a singular opportunity to highlight the low end of their dynamic range, drawing the audience in at key moments. Though the work is at times stormy, a mood of celebration dominates. This was particularly apparent in the horn lines, which would occasionally leap rowdily out of the texture.

Altogether, the orchestra maintained a superb balance and clarity throughout, demonstrating impressive cohesion as an ensemble. The trumpet fanfare in the finale seemed to echo the fanfare of the Panufnik, beautifully wrapping up the concert’s reverent mood.

The Frost School of Music Symphonic Winds will perform at Gusman Concert Hall 4 p.m. Sunday. events.miami.edu

Posted in Performances

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