In the penultimate program of the season, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Music Director Jonathon Heyward led an exhilarating selection of three spirited, high-energy works. Beethoven’s "Emperor" piano concerto certainly made for a majestic, pull-all-the-stops opener.
A bold statement of the E-flat major home key resonated from the orchestra, answered by cascading flourishes in the piano from soloist Yefim Bronfman. The orchestral material that followed brimmed with ebullience, shedding classical ideals to lie on the edge of Romanticism in its expressive depth. Bronfman’s technical arsenal was flawless, and he deftly balanced graceful and lyrical playing with the exuberant. I was particularly struck by the thunderous build-up to the climax of the first movement.
Worlds apart from that bellicose movement was the central Adagio un poco mosso. Soft strings were pure and reverential, and in the delicate piano line, Bronfman teased meaning out of each note. In an ingenious transition, the heavenly slow movement melded into the rollicking Rondo finale, given with blazing energy and not without a certain regal character as if to further support the work’s epithet. Heightening contrasts, matters dipped to almost a whisper just before the resounding final flourish.
This season, James Lee III has served as the BSO’s composer-in-residence, a post that came to a climax this weekend with the world premiere of his Concerto for Orchestra. The substantial 35-minute work was written with the specific BSO players in mind to showcase their talents, making for a resplendent parting gift to this orchestra and city. Cast in four movements, the opening Revived Charm references Baltimore’s Charm City nickname. The music took flight, brightly colored and percussive, in a festive display of civic pride conveyed through shimmering orchestral brilliance.
Anxious Communities marked a shift from the purely celebratory to acknowledge some of the city’s darker realities. In Yearning Souls, the work truly became a concerto for orchestra, with solo passages for all the principal players – quite strikingly beginning with the double bass – traveling around the ensemble. Rising City was propelled by a three-note motive on B to intone "Bal-ti-more", colorful and invigorating for a virtuosic close.
As a pendant to concertos, the program closed with Smetana’s The Moldau from his cycle of six nationalistic tone poems. Like the Lee work, it too has a strong sense of place: in this case, the titular river as it snakes through Bohemian landscapes and cities. Gently flowing flutes depicted the river’s origins, coalescing into a lush, arching theme in the strings. Heyward functioned here like a riverboat captain who knows these waters intimately well, vividly drawing our attention to awe-inspiring sights or the abandon of a peasant dance.
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