Insightful Elgar from Asier Polo, JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic

This concert by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and its Music Director JoAnn Falletta consisted of four works composed over a 15-year span that nonetheless were of widely differing character. Elgar's late-career Cello Concerto in E minor dates from 1919. It's an introspective work, fully in character with numerous other pieces written by composers in the wake of World War 1. From the very first measures, Spanish cellist Asier Polo imbued the concerto with a restrained yet fervent intensity that fully captured the music’s somber essence. Particularly memorable were the middle two sections, featuring intricate delicacy in the second movement plus a truly transporting Adagio, with the cello's phrases seemingly suspended above the orchestra. As an encore, Polo and the BPO treated the appreciative audience to a winsome performance of the Intermezzo from the opera Goyescas by Enrique Granados.

In contrast to the dark, burnished understatement of the Elgar, two glittering works by Sir William Walton and Zoltán Kodály showcased the brilliance and color for which the Buffalo Philharmonic is so famous. Walton's 1926 Portsmouth Point Overture is brash, bawdy and full of bright, jaunty melodies with frequent changes of meter. Falletta and the Buffalo musicians reveled in the animated liveliness; the doubled woodwind passages were particularly noteworthy, landed as they were with complete precision.

The suite from Háry János, also composed in 1926, is one of Kodály's best-known works. It's easy to understand why – and fair dues to the composer for realizing that these six captivating excerpts from his “tall-tale” comic opera, and its reliance on so much Hungarian dialogue, would never achieve fame without being extracted and turned into a suite. The orchestral “sneeze” that opens the Prelude was appropriately explosive, and there followed a whole range of tasty musical morsels, featuring tuneful percussion in the Viennese Musical Clock, wonderful cimbalom playing by Chester Englander and solo viola passages by Anya Shemetyeva in the Song with its longing spirit. Feisty battle music (delivered by Falletta and the orchesra with a bit of a wink and a nudge), a whirling czárdás, and the Emperor's Entrance (likewise presented with tongue firmly planted in cheek) wrapped up a thrilling performance that was great fun all round.

Played before the concluding Háry János Suite was a performance of Florent Schmitt's In Memoriam. Composed in 1935, this rarity is an homage to Gabriel Fauré, Schmitt's teacher and mentor at the Paris Conservatoire who would remain an important artistic influence throughout the composer’s life. Subtitled Cippus feralis (essentially untranslatable, but loosely it means “Wild Tombstone”), the piece is a kind of threnody that alternates between beauty and despair.

Opening with plaintive oboe and English horn solos, masterfully performed by BPO musicians Henry Ward and Anna Mattix, other woodwinds soon join in, followed by strings and brass to produce recurring waves of anguish. Alternating with these climaxes are passages of yearning and beauty, drawn on themes from Fauré's opera Pénélope. While clearly different from the “orientalist” compositions upon which so much of Schmitt's fame as a composer rests, In Memoriam does share similarities in its fervent passion and orchestration, including little splashes of color from the harp, celesta and percussion. Falletta brought each of these special adornments to the fore while sculpting the emotional arc of the composition to great effect. Tonight's concert was likely the first-ever performance of In Memoriam in North America, and it proved to be a piece well worth resurrecting.