PERFORMING ARTS

Monday, May 21, 2007

BSO With Leon Fleisher And Katherine Jacobson

Friday night at Meyerhoff Hall, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra took on the refined, forceful character of a top European ensemble. Under the leadership of Guenther Herbig, the orchestra presented Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 7, assisted by celebrated pianists Leon Fleisher and Katherine Jacobson, and Bruckner's Symphony No. 7.

Herbig, a stately presence, guided the BSO toward absolute cleanliness and brilliant, burnished strings in the Mozart. They provided a worthy backdrop for the consummate musicianship of Fleisher. Since his return in 1995 from a debilitating hand affliction, Fleisher has provided a reminder of how fortunate his recovery is with each performance. The tenderness, joy, and vivacity with which Mozart imbued the two-piano concerto were abundantly clear, its formal majesty expertly hewn. Fleisher's combination of sensitivity and vigor is difficult to match, but Jacobson, his wife, proved an able partner. Their ensemble was precise and exciting, with seamless, energetic trading of phrases.

In the Bruckner, climactic washes of warm sound bolstered by Wagner tubas and trembling strings awed the audience. Herbig was impressive, but often shortsighted and severe. After a thoughtfully shaped opening, crescendos built alarmingly quickly and lyricism waned. The second movement, intended as a requiem for Richard Wagner, came across as more tense than elegiac. The third and fourth movements were more effective, the contrast between the scherzo and the trio in the former particularly fresh. One hopes that in the future the BSO will retain the polish inspired by Herbig, but hold fast to its characteristic dynamism and warmth that were missed in this piece.

-- Ronni Reich

Darin Atwater and the Soulful Symphony at Strathmore

For someone slight of stature, Darin Atwater was a huge presence at the goings-on at Strathmore on Friday. He may have been a modest figure on the podium as he presided over the world premiere of his "Paint Factory," a 90-minute hip-hop symphony/oratorio for orchestra (his own Soulful Symphony), chorus, rap trio, vocalists and dancers, but: Not only the music but also the lyrics and the orchestrations were his; he accompanied himself on the piano for two lyrical song movements and led it all with the sort of understated command that preserved order and a modicum of restraint in a context that had a feeling of boundless joy and energy.

The piece is organized in 16 movements, a short orchestral "Intro" and an "Outro," a pair of Arab- and African-influenced dance movements and 12 movements named for colors, each associated with themes such as "Desire," "Equality," "Optimism" and "Royalty." Atwater's idiom is a comfortable amalgam of classical, (non-gangsta) rap, blues, jazz and gospel, and while there are moments that seem improvisatory (the sax has some wonderful opportunities), most of the music is carefully structured and cleanly orchestrated.

The performances were great. The orchestra, with the strings on stage right and everyone else stage left, was able to deliver on the small details when needed but also could revel in the broad expanse of Atwater's emotional language. The members of the chorus, well miked and singing without scores, poured their bodies as well as their voices into the spirit of the music. Vocalists Cynthia Renée and Shaun Mykals handled their songs sensitively. The dancing was vivid and powerful, Dontae Winslow brought cheers for his exuberant trumpet solos, and the rap group M.E.P brought the audience to its feet.

-- Joan Reinthaler

Brentano String Quartet

The Brentano String Quartet clearly has an affinity for Beethoven. Not only does the group take its name from Antonie Brentano (thought to be the composer's mysterious "Immortal Beloved"), it's also made a name for itself with penetrating, widely praised performances of the late quartets. But the Brentano is equally committed to the works of contemporary composers, and at the Kreeger Museum on Saturday night, the ensemble brought the two together in a program that echoed dramatically across the centuries.

Beethoven's last string quartets are monumental works, regarded by many musicians as the greatest of the form. Deeply inspired by the A Minor Quartet, Op. 132, the Argentine composer Mario Davidovsky used its slow movement as a starting point for his own String Quartet No. 5, from 1988. It's a dramatic, highly compressed work that seethes with tension, seesawing between angular explosions and radiant serenity. And though the connections with Beethoven seemed elusively subtle, it proved to be a fascinating work, and the musicians gave it a robust and deeply involved performance.

Even so, the Davidovsky (and the Mozart Quartet in B-flat, K. 589, which opened the program) paled beside Beethoven's own magnificent String Quartet in E-flat, Op. 127. It's perhaps the most lyrical of the late quartets, but it's a dark, searching lyricism with confounding depths. The Brentano turned in an intense and beautifully calibrated reading that balanced the work's slow-melting beauties and its sharp wit; a memorable performance of one of the great works in the repertoire.

-- Stephen Brookes

Cantate Chamber Singers: 'The Creation'

Conductor Gisele Becker and her Cantate Chamber Singers delivered a performance of Haydn's exuberant oratorio "The Creation" on Saturday evening at Westmoreland Church in Bethesda. With a choir of 35 and orchestra of 30 -- just the right size for the warmly immediate acoustics of the church -- Becker shaped introspective moments with sensitivity and kept faster movements surging forward at a smacking pace.

The woodwinds -- rightly brought forward in the orchestral balance -- were terrific in the composer's playfully imitative writing. (A mention of birds has the flutes twittering away, and a flatulent contrabassoon accompanies the "heavy beasts.") In this ensemble of modern instruments -- playing in informed period style -- only the violins seemed to have intermittent trouble keeping pitch and attacks spot-on while reducing vibrato.

The soloists were a strong trio, with sweet-voiced young tenor Zach Borichevsky clearly a talent to keep an ear on, and bass Steven Combs a continual source of pleasure with his velvety timbre and understatedly eloquent phrasing. Amanda Balestrieri's soprano sounded a touch more blanched and edgily bright on Saturday than it has in years past, but her high notes were thrilling.

Likewise, the sopranos in the Cantate Singers offered less ingratiating tone than the rest of the chorus. But they matched the other sections in confidence, agility and cleanly articulated treatment of the text, and this modestly scaled ensemble made a splendid sound together.

-- Joe Banno

Thomas Circle Singers

The Thomas Circle Singers have cultivated the pianissimo to an art form all its own. With a program at the National City Christian Church on Saturday that devoted its first half to the likes of Duruflé, Messiaen and Fauré, and the second to John Rutter's 1985 Requiem, they had themselves a feast of quiet and contemplative scores on which to lavish their expertise. Of course, the acoustics of the sanctuary's vast space helped a bit, softening already gentle edges, but it also laid a cloud of indistinction over diction that only occasionally was able to emerge as clear and precise.

Conductor James Kreger has his 32-person ensemble singing weightlessly and with agility. Soft singing is much more difficult to sustain than loud, but pitch never wavered and long phrases emerged sounding fresh and easy. The misty French sonorities established in the four opening motets by Duruflé served everything else on the program as well; even the Rutter, with its occasional hints of modal English folk melody, needed this French flavor to project its message of peace.

But an hour and a half of this warm, comfortable fuzziness could have used a occasional wake-up jolt, maybe in the form of some of Poulenc's rhythmic energy -- something to get the blood flowing again. This was a problem with programming, not with performance.

A small, supportive instrumental group accompanied the Rutter. Organist Julie Vidric Evans gave a nice account of Messiaen's "Dieu Parmi Nous," and there was some fine work by sopranos Elizabeth Dutton and Kristine Johnson.

-- Joan Reinthaler