From Manhattan to Rome: musical journeys end Baltimore Symphony season

Jonathon Heyward concluded his first season as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra with a varied, generous program that highlighted this ensemble’s strengths and weaknesses alike. Jessie Montgomery’s Records From a Vanishing City (2016) has become something of a calling card for the young maestro – he performed it last summer with the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center, his other new gig. Montgomery crafted the nebulous work as a tribute to the people, cultures and sounds that populated her Manhattan childhood, and that panoply was on display in sections for woodwind, brass and percussion that called to mind Caribbean, Hispanic and African American musical traditions. Grafted alongside this sound world was the shimmering string quality that Montgomery, a trained violinist, has made a trademark of her compositional style. The piece slightly overstays its welcome at roughly 12 minutes, and wayward intonation occasionally marred some of the extended brass passages, but Heyward guided an overall performance that confirmed Montgomery’s place as one of America’s most valuable living composers.

BSO artist-in-residence Christine Goerke joined the orchestra for the third time this season, choosing to finish out her tenure in that role with Richard Strauss’s Vier Letzte Lieder. Although Goerke’s soprano maintained much floating beauty in its upper register, this hallmark of the song repertoire proved more trying than other recent assignments. Variations of volume and color were fleeting, and her voice seemed to move between top and bottom with little connection to the middle register. Goerke occasionally chopped apart what should have been long-breathed phrases, and nearly all the songs were taken too fast – particularly the dreamy, hopeful Frühling. The orchestral playing also suffered from a lack of poetry: the wonderful suspension that characterizes late Strauss was hardly in evidence, and Concertmaster Jonathan Carney turned the lyrical violin solo in Beim Schlafengehen into an unfortunate steeplechase.

After intermission, the forces found themselves on steadier footing with the world premiere of Captivating Personas by James Lee III. Inspired by a series of paintings from the young Baltimore-raised artist Quinn Bryant, which were projected above the stage during the performance, this orchestral cycle burst forth with instantly graspable melodies and a distinct musical language, which Heyward rendered with a high level of specificity. In Power, an evocation of important women from history, warm clusters of woodwind and strings soared above insistent percussive elements, seemingly communicating the fight for respect and equality. Bluesy brass and syncopated percussion punctuated Attitude, which lived up to its title. My favorite movement of the piece, Bored Comfort, provided a stormy subtext to a relationship on autopilot. The final section, Breath of the Victorian Scape, showed the least programmatic distinction, but the total quality of the work augured well for Lee’s new role as the BSO’s composer in residence.

Speaking on behalf of the musicians, Principal English Horn Jane Marvine dedicated Respighi’s Pini di Roma to the memory of recently retired trombonist John Vance, who died suddenly in February. This evergreen proved a buoyant way to end the season, although I found Heyward’s leadership more persuasive in the work’s graceful passages than in the kaleidoscopic pandemonium that can send listeners into an ecstatic frenzy. The low strings that take center stage after the initial burst of chaos in The Pines of the Villa Borghese sounded especially elegant, anchored by the rich tone of Principal Cello Dariusz Skoraczewski, and the offstage brass in The Pines of the Appian Way conveyed a special sense of dignity, not just bombast. Like Ravel’s Bolero, this chestnut can be written off as inconsequential or vulgar in the wrong hands, but Heyward’s interpretation, varied in mood and orchestral texture, certainly showed a well-judged respect for the composer’s intentions.