Fitting launch to orchestra's 40th season
By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
Published October 5, 2007
BY JOHN FLEMING
Times Performing Arts Critic
TAMPA - With its hushed "spring awakening" theme in the first movement, Mahler's Symphony No. 1 is a good way to open an orchestra season, promising many musical splendors to come. And so, with all the hope of spring or fall, after the long Florida summer, did the Florida Orchestra launch its 40th anniversary season. Music director Stefan Sanderling was on the podium Thursday night at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.
The orchestra gave a fine account of Mahler's hourlong opus. Sanderling's pacing was on the slow side, but he held together all the fragmentary shards of virtuosity that make up the sprawling first movement with rare coherence.
Audiences in the 19th century had problems with aspects of the First Symphony like the mocking minor-key parody of Frere Jacques that begins the third movement (in a solo by principal bass Dee Moses), or the shrieking oboe and trumpet passages that suggest a Weimar cabaret. Now they're the sort of spooky touches a modern listener can relish, as a uncanny premonition by Mahler of the horrors to come in 20th century Europe.
You could spend a lifetime inside the Mahler symphonies and never really get to the bottom of them. The chance to hear one live doesn't come around all that often, so it was disheartening to see Morsani Hall less than half full for the performance.
Sanderling balanced Mahler's challenging, clangorous music with one of the most popular romantic piano concertos. Louis Lortie was the lyrical soloist in the Grieg Piano Concerto, and he combined deft, feathery finesse in the sweet melodies along with plenty of punch for the big chordal progressions.
Uncertainty over the orchestra's lack of a labor contract with its musicians colored the atmosphere of the evening. Before the concert, musicians were on the sidewalk outside the hall, answering questions from audience members about the unhappy situation.
John Fleming can be reached at fleming@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8716.
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Florida Orchestra
The orchestra's masterworks program is repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday at Mahaffey Theater, St. Petersburg; and 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater. $21-$56. (813) 286-2403; toll-free 1-800-662-7286; www.floridaorchestra.org.