2023-09-21 00:04:00
The first concert of the Great Subscription series, which took place on Tuesday as part of the Bruckner Festival, was also under the sign of the “eternal feminine”. In the second part, the Bruckner Orchestra presented Florence Price’s First Symphony under its chief conductor Markus Poschner. A work that, not entirely coincidentally, reminds the listener of Dvorak’s last symphony. Its melodic phrases are designed in the spirit of what Price saw as “powerfully moving and captivating” African American folk music: “Simple music of the heart and therefore powerful.” She demonstrated this power in a fabulous piece, which performed masterfully in a very late romantic style for 1932, but which captivated the audience so much that cheering applause broke out following both the first and the effective third movement. No wonder this work won the Wanamaker Prize in 1932 and was premiered by the Chicago Symphony at the 1933 World’s Fair. This made it the first composition by an African American woman to be played by a US orchestra.
The premiere of the concerto for saxophone quartet and orchestra by Elena Firsova was completely different. And yet the two works are united by the idea of non-avant-garde, of the simple pursuit of beauty. The Russian, who has lived in England since 1991, achieves this in a subtle way: the alto saxophone begins with a fine cadence, which leads to a balanced, slow first part in which the solo saxophone quartet complements the four horns in the orchestra. A skilful interplay in which a rather small orchestra intervenes sparingly and creates supernatural silence. The saxophones remain delicate in sound. A quick grab leads back to the ascetic starting point. The sonic.art saxophone quartet – Adrian Tully, Alexander Doroshkevich, Taewook Ahn, Annegret Tully – elevated this fragility to virtuosity. Together with the brilliantly sparing Bruckner Orchestra, the result was an aura that thrilled the audience. Leonard Bernstein’s “Symphonic Dances” made an effective start – extremely precise and analytically phrased, they lacked the master’s looseness.
Conclusion: An enriching first evening in the large subscription.
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