Fest directors help CSO open season in style
HYANNIS – The twin linchpins of music on the Cape came together on the Barnstable High School Performing Arts Center stage this weekend to open the Cape Symphony Orchestra season.
CSO music director Jung-Ho Pak invited the duo directors of the Cape Cod Chamber Music Festival, pianist Jon Nakamatsu and clarinetist Jon Manasse, to kick off the orchestra’s 2015-16 season.
The program was varied in instrumentation and repertory, with a world premiere for the duo by jazz composer Gordon Goodwin, solo forays by each player, and a concert-concluding presentation of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony.
The strengths of classical music on the Cape, both summer and winter, chamber music and orchestral settings, were on view in one afternoon. Manasse and Nakamatsu both showed that while their job as directors of the summer festival is to bring other great musicians to the Cape, when they take the stage themselves, the results are just fine, thank you.
Manasse began this unusual program with a rare gem: Debussy’s “Première Rhapsodie for Clarinet.” Although the one-movement work does not have the heft to be called a concerto, it has sensuous solo writing and imaginative exchanges with the orchestra.
With great breath control, and exalted phrasing, Manasse created an intimate opening moment for the program.
Then Nakamatsu turned the page to Chopin, offering another rarity, the “Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Brillante.” Conceived as one work by the composer, the two sections are mainly given over to the soloist. In fact, the opening “Andante Spianato” is just for the piano, Nakamatsu tastefully articulating the long solo with fluid playing.
A brief fanfare connects the two works, and the “Polonaise” unfolded in Nakamatsu’s hands as if he had written it himself. A prodigious player, who erases the technical difficulties with his facile manner, Nakamatsu eased his virtuosic piano part into the simple orchestral accompaniment.
Gordon Goodwin, an accomplished film and jazz composer, has been a frequent collaborator with Nakamatsu and Manasse. His short suite “The Single Step” alternated between soloists, and between upbeat moods and contemplative.
After a clarinet intro, and a stepping-out phrase for the piano, the orchestra jumps in with lively, filmic phrases. Most of the intricate parts were in the back of the stage, for the horns, with unison strings filling the front.
This pattern followed throughout, with jazzy rhythms for the soloists acting as counterpoint to solid orchestral forays. A short solo for concertmaster Jae Cosmos Lee led to a double cadenza – a call-and-response that broke down into a concluding jam.
The work was accessible and straightforward, paying homage to the skills of the soloists and leaving the ensemble work in the background.
Before they could leave for intermission, the duo offered a pair of encores – a terrific and tender duet from Goodwin’s suite “Four Views,” and throw-down arrangement of the Gershwins’ “I Got Rhythm.”
Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony mixes tightly knit musical constructs with wild ideas in almost unseemly proportions. Its first movement, a taut sonata form blending one robust and one delicate melody, gets highlighted with a stormy percussion section – tam-tam, cymbals, large gong and bass drum – as it concludes.
The scherzo also stays strictly in form, but mixes odd (and appealing) gestures, notably a staccato brass bit with pizzicato strings underneath.
The probing slow movement, also unusual, never works its way out of its rootless searching for a lyrical climax. The finale recaps the opening movement in the cellos, but then sets out in its own direction, again climaxing in a percussive frenzy. The playing backstage was alert and dramatic.
The symphony was a particular challenge on the podium – a vast work, almost always searching for a conclusive gesture but not arriving at it. Pak had a great sense of how to mold his forces, and made the piece into an audience pleaser.
The Cape Symphony Orchestra next performs “Just Judy,” a tribute to Judy Garland, with soloist Sarah Uriarte Berry, Oct. 10 (two performances) and 11 at the Barnstable High School Performing Arts Center. Tickets and information are available at www.capesymphony.org or 508-362-1111.
What: Cape Symphony Orchestra, Jung-Ho Pak conducting
When: Sunday afternoon
Where: Barnstable High School Performing Arts Center, Hyannis