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Posted by Tim Smith at The Baltimore Sun

Have we reached the musical saturation point in Baltimore?

I wondered about that over the weekend, starting with Friday’s sparsely attended Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concert at Meyerhoff Hall. There were a fair number of empty seats the next night in a much smaller venue – Concert Artists of Baltimore’s season-opener at the Gordon Center for Performing Arts in Owings Mills. And on Sunday afternoon, when the BSO’s principal trumpet, Andrew Balio, and up-and-coming pianist Inna Faliks gave a free recital at Second Presbyterian Church. Now that I think about it, there weren’t too many folks at the Peabody Trio’s concert last Wednesday, either.

If these had been mundane performances by provincial artists, such turnouts would not have made me think twice. But each of these examples happened to boast music-making of considerable quality, the sort that helps to make the Baltimore area a significant cultural spot. So where was everybody? Don’t they realize how good the music-making is around here?

I suppose there’s some small comfort in the fact that people ask the same question all over the country; even in New York, reports of scant attendance for worthy things are not unknown. Blaming the crummy economy is the usual response (inapplicable to free concerts), along with bemoaning the aging of the audience for classical music or the lack of music education in schools. Whatever the cause, the situation has to be driving many an organization’s management to distraction – if not drink.

It could be that it’s unrealistic to expect any community to absorb as much stuff as we get offered almost every week. And if musical groups and concert series, large and small, can somehow keep on plugging even when attendance is spotty, maybe that’s what counts most.

Still, I’d sure like to see more people – on a regular basis – experiencing what Baltimore has going for it musically. Every time I see a small audience, I wonder if it means we’ll soon lose a musical asset. (Might as well come clean – there’s a wee bit of self-preservation in my thinking. I need the music to go on, just as much as musicians and presenters do.)

By the way, if there’s anyone out there who doesn’t bother with concerts because it’s easier to slip another compact disc into the stereo set (and people won’t be unwrapping candy next to you), you’re missing a lot. I have great recordings of Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8 and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 2, for example, but I still got knocked out by being there to hear the gorgeous things Sergiu Comissiona and the BSO achieved with the former on Friday and the incisive way Edward Polochick and the Concert Artists approached the latter on Saturday.

No sound system fully captures what music sounds like being made before your very ears, especially in such acoustically inviting spots as Meyerhoff, the Gordon Center and Second Pres. The total experience of concert-going – aural (including ambient noises), visual and physical – can be terrifically satisfying, unique to each time and place. The more communal the experience, the better, with energy flowing from stage to audience and back again.

I’ll try to hope that this recent rash of under-attended performances doesn’t portend anything terribly dire and merely reflects the natural, cyclical order of public enterprises. With luck (not to mention more money and marketing), more folks will materialize in the days ahead. As even a cursory glance at the remaining action-packed season schedule makes plain, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet.

Memorable

Getting back to the Concert Artists of Baltimore, artistic director Polochick highlighted the talent in both wings of the organization, instrumental and vocal, Saturday at the Gordon Center and also reaffirmed his noteworthy talent for galvanizing musicians.

Mozart’s ineffably beautiful Sinfonia Concertante showcased concertmaster Jose Miguel Cueto and principal violist Jennifer Rende. Cueto’s tone was a little short on distinctive coloring, but his understanding of the music’s refined architecture paid off handsomely. Rende produced a lush tonal palette throughout. Both sculpted phrases with great sensitivity; their shared cadenzas reached particular heights of eloquence. Polochick was, as usual, a model partner and he had the small orchestra, which sounded twice its size, articulating warmly.

Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 2, Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise), superficially resembles the layout of Beethoven’s Ninth. But Mendelssohn does not attempt a world-embracing statement here. Rather, he lays out a lyrical argument first with the orchestra, then adds the chorus to sing of thanksgiving for divine goodness. This symphony will never replace the Third and Fourth in the public’s affections, but more performances as energized and poetic as this one could well improve its standing.

Polochick’s command of, and affection for, the piece guaranteed memorable results. From the start, with rock-steady trombones nobly intoning the score’s unifying motto, the music had a spark of drama and lyricism that never waned. Solid, dynamic work from the brass and woodwind players continued throughout; more strings would have been welcome to balance that force, but that proved a minor matter.

The chorus met the finale’s demands admirably, reaching a terrific exultation in the Die Nacht ist vergangen section. The several soloists from within the group coped at least adequately, often much more than that (especially tenor David Smith and soprano Ah Hong).

  It’s hardly news that the Concert Artists of Baltimore serves up interesting programs with panache. Still, Saturday night’s performance at the Gordon Center for Performing Arts in Owings Mills commanded extra attention and seemed, in its own way, as notable as the lunar eclipse going on outside.

The concert offered a rare alignment of repertoire – the boldly confident, sometimes almost cheeky Mass for chorus and orchestra written by a young Giacomo Puccini; and the exquisitely pastoral Symphony No. 5 written by Ralph Vaughan Williams at the height of his creative powers amid the darkness of World War II. Neither work turns up with the frequency it deserves. (Vaughan Williams, though, is getting unusual attention this season. The Peabody Symphony Orchestra recently offered an emotionally charged account of his compelling Symphony No. 6, led by Hajime Teri Murai. I wonder if the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will ever notice this composer’s richly rewarding symphonies.)

Concert Artists conductor Edward Polochick took a gamble with Vaughan Williams’ Fifth, which is not ordinarily played by a chamber orchestra. Lush string writing is a prime component of this symphony, which usually means you need a whole bunch of string players. But Polochick figured his forces could do the piece justice. They did.

From the plaintive call of the horns that launches the symphony, like some lonely beacon across a bleak, unfathomable sea, to the serene fade-out that closes it, the musicians made a warm, cohesive sound and seemed vividly connected to the material. Eloquent English horn and oboe solos, along with considerable tonal strength from the strings, made the prayerful third movement register deeply.

Polochick had the music unfolding unhurriedly, yet with a certain tension underneath that did not relax until the extraordinary closing measures, when the music seems to be gently slipping away, like the old spacecraft Voyager I last week, into a whole new world.

Puccini once said that God had tapped him “with His little finger and said, ‘Write for the theater, only the theater.’ ” Perhaps the Almighty had just heard his Mass, which sounds like an opera in choral robes. Written as a final school exercise at the age of 22 and forgotten until decades after Puccini’s death, the score is filled with soaring melodies and effective bits of drama generated directly by the text. The big gem in this Mass is the Gloria section (the work’s nickname is Messa di Gloria), driven by a catchy, jaunty tune that would have made a few heads turn in church back in 1880.

Polochick committed at least a misdemeanor offense in the court of music by reprising the rousing conclusion of that Gloria right after Puccini’s beautifully reflective finale, the Agnus Dei. Of course, audiences always like loud endings, and this appendage provided one quite effectively. Still, I wasn’t totally persuaded by the conductorial license. I was, however, won over by the combination of sensitivity and theatricality of Polochick’s interpretation; the smoothly blended, colorful choral singing; and the fervent solo singing by tenor David Smith, baritone James Dobson and bass Thomas McNichols.

Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun

  ]]> http://www.cabalto.org/welcome-attention-from-concert-artists-early-puccini-and-overlooked-vaughan-williams/feed/ 0 http://www.cabalto.org/concert-artists-3/ http://www.cabalto.org/concert-artists-3/#comments Thu, 30 Aug 2012 18:39:15 +0000 CAB http://www.desotopaper.com/CAB/?p=335 Written by Tim Smith, The Baltimore Sun    Wednesday, 25 February 2004 10:20  

If Saturday night’s sizable turnout at the Gordon Center for Performing Arts in Owings Mills is any indication, folks are finally catching on to how much substance and enjoyment can be found when the Concert Artists of Baltimore perform there.

The hall’s superior acoustics make an ideal match for the spirit and commitment of this chamber orchestra and professional chorus. Artistic director Edward Polochick invariably comes up with interesting programs and, as at this concert, conducts them with an unusually inspiring energy.

To start, there was a riveting account of the Chamber Symphony for string orchestra by Shostakovich, which incorporates all the fear, contempt and bitterness of a life strained by war and totalitarianism. Polochick struck deep into the heart of the score, nowhere more chillingly than in the passage when vicious chords break out like dreaded knocks at the door in the still of night. The slow, final fadeout, beautifully accomplished by the players, expressed an ache at once personal and universal.

Moving from pain to comfort, Polochick next offered a rare performance of the a cappella Mass for double chorus by Swiss composer Frank Martin. It’s a fascinating piece that reaches backward toward chant, yet sits comfortably and clearly in the early 20th century. Aside from a little intonation slippage in the Agnus Dei, the choristers did exceptional work under Polochick’s guidance, particularly in the haunting Et incarnatus est and Crucifixus passages of the Credo.

To close, there was another inexplicably under-performed piece, the Clarinet Concerto by Englishman Gerald Finzi. David Drosinos, principal clarinetist and founding member of Concert Artists, played the idyllic score with technical security, tonal warmth and exceptionally eloquent phrasing. Conductor and ensemble backed the soloist with admirable sensitivity. The performance made me hope that Polochick will unearth some more Finzi next season – how about the exquisite Eclogue for piano and strings?

Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun

It was the prelude to a celebration by the Concert Artists of Baltimore of the brilliant pianist’s milestone season – he’s 75. Fleisher, who a few years ago became the first living pianist to be inducted into the Classical Music Hall of Fame in Cincinnati, returned the favor by hitting one out of the hall.

His performance of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 defied the laws of neurology. Fleisher’s career, launched six decades ago, was derailed in 1965 when his right hand was struck by a disorder called dystonia.

Although he remained a keyboard force, championing the left-hand repertoire, he never lost the hope of resuming his two-hand career. Periodically, with the help of one therapy or another, Fleisher attempted to do just that. The results in the 1980s and 1990s were uneven.

One piece, in particular, that Brahms concerto, proved out of reach. A 1998 performance of it I heard him give with the Florida Philharmonic was more notable for the heroism than the actual notes, which often spread into blurry approximations.

But a few years later, Fleisher enjoyed unexpected relief from his right hand’s neurological troubles in the form of Botox injections. Since then, his occasional re-entries into the two-hand arena have proven increasingly successful.

Even allowing for some rough patches of articulation, Thursday’s performance was a personal and musical triumph. The event had all the come-from-behind, beat-the-odds energy of an inspirational movie – a little bit like Shine, only with a truly great artist as the hero.

Fleisher’s big smile and high-fives for conductor Edward Polochick afterward, not to mention the hearty, long-lasting roar from a good-sized crowd, completed the Hollywood ending.

Throughout the concerto, the pianist produced plenty of tonal power as needed, but was more interested in making music than an impression. His broad tempos never seemed calculated for ease of execution; instead, the extra room allowed him to explore the music’s light and dark elements in consistently arresting fashion.

Fleisher achieved sublime beauty of phrasing in the Adagio (which persistent coughers in the hall did their best to destroy), while the outer movements contained considerable drama and thrust.

Polochick was an ever-supportive collaborator, the orchestra assured and dynamic.

The program opened with an under-appreciated, powerfully anti-war piece by Vaughan Williams, Dona Nobis Pacem. Polochick tapped the music’s drama and lyrical richness; he ensured a remarkably hushed, poignant effect at the very end.

The Concert Artists’ Symphonic Choir was in excellent form. So was soprano Ah Hong, her silvery voice and emotive phrasing touching the heart of the music. Veteran baritone John Shirley-Quirk revealed innate understanding of the composer’s style, if diminished vocal resources to convey it.

Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun ]]> http://www.cabalto.org/fleisher-brings-out-best-in-night-of-triumph/feed/ 0 http://www.cabalto.org/adams-bruckner-are-tied-together-without-strings-unlikely-programming-makes-sense-to-polochick/ http://www.cabalto.org/adams-bruckner-are-tied-together-without-strings-unlikely-programming-makes-sense-to-polochick/#comments Thu, 30 Aug 2012 18:25:30 +0000 CAB http://www.desotopaper.com/CAB/?p=328 Written by Tim Smith, The Baltimore Sun    Thursday, 02 December 2004 10:10  ”I got to thinking what interesting bed partners these two works would make,” says conductor Edward Polochick. That’s putting it mildly.The works in question, which he has programmed for Saturday’s performance by the Concert Artists of Baltimore, provide a decidedly unusual juxtaposition. On one side, a richly textured, liturgical-minded piece by 19th century, late-romantic Austrian composer Anton Bruckner. On the other, a richly textured, secular-minded piece by 20th – and 21st – century, postmodernist American composer John Adams.

The chance to hear either Bruckner’s Mass in E minor or Adams’ Grand Pianola Music would make the program well worth catching; the chance to hear both at a single sitting makes this one of the most enticing events of the season.

Despite differences of content, intent and style, these two compositions do have a strong connective point – both scores eliminate string instruments (which means, of course, that the program is titled “No Strings Attached”).

Polochick cites another similarity, namely the way both Bruckner and Adams painstakingly achieve a remarkable “palette of colors.”

As the Mass opens, for example, the voices’ first syllables and chords gradually emerge, as if out of ether (or incense), to form an intense prayer. And throughout the Adams work, “you hear all these wonderful shifts of one color to another through the harmonies or instrumentation,” Polochick says.

For centuries, composers – devout, far-from-devout and even non-Catholic – have set sections of the Latin Mass to music, intended for use during an actual religious service or for a concert (or both).

Bruckner, very much in the devout category, poured some of his most affecting ideas into three Masses. The one in E minor, written in 1866 for eight-part chorus and wind orchestra, beautifully reflects the message and mood of the sacred texts, nowhere more impressively than in the Credo section. Bruckner achieves an intense contrast of emotions between the solemnity and sorrow of the lines about the crucifixion and death and the outburst of joy at the mention of resurrection.

The score looks backward to the 16th-century liturgical style of Palestrina and forward to the expansive eloquence of Bruckner’s own symphonies. “It’s written in a very concise manner,” says Polochick, who admits to being only a lukewarm fan of the composer.

“With this Mass, you get the essence of Bruckner in about a half-hour,” he says. “You don’t have to wait an hour and a half, like in his symphonies. And the sound of the Mass will help settle the ear into the flavor of music for winds and voices.”

Only three amplified women’s voices – “an updated version of the Andrews Sisters,” Polochick says with a laugh – are heard in Adams’ Grand Pianola Music. But they are, in their own way, as important to the three-movement score as the chorus is to Bruckner’s Mass. They don’t sing any words, just “ah” sounds, producing one more color in a fascinating palette that is centered around two grand pianos (a “pianola” was a brand of player piano introduced in the 1920s).

Filling in the rest of this sonic landscape are pairs of wind instruments, ranging “from the softness of flutes to the brashness of trombones,” Polochick says, “and a battery of percussion – marimba, glockenspiel, xylophone, bells, drums. The pianos are used percussively, often in tandem with what the percussion is doing.”

Grand Pianola Music didn’t meet with universal acclaim after it was premiered in 1982 and started making the concert hall rounds; Adams was especially surprised at the amount of booing it received at a New York performance.

“I meant it neither as a joke nor a nose-thumbing at the tradition of earnest, serious contemporary music, nor as an intended provocation of any kind,” Adams wrote later. “It was rather, in its loudest and most hyperventilated moments, a kind of Whitmanesque yawp, an exhilaration of good humor, certainly a parody and therefore ironic.”

Minimalism-friendly listeners embrace the work for its striking originality and brilliant sonic effects, a combination that suggests Philip Glass on steroids, or maybe Steve Reich after a shot of laughing gas.

“I don’t get into the works of Reich or Glass,” Polochick says. “But there’s something about Adams and his approach to minimalism that speaks to me. Maybe the average listener would say, ‘I don’t hear any difference,’ but I do. The first time I heard Grand Pianola Music, the only way I could describe it was a two-story-high accordion cascading down a hill.”

The composer was inspired by a dream about driving on a highway and being approached by two speeding stretch limos that turned into “the world’s longest Steinway pianos” as they passed him, generating “volleys of B-flat and E-flat major arpeggios.”

Much of Grand Pianola Music is much subtler than the dream description might lead you to expect, especially the middle movement, which Adams describes as “a slow serene pasture with grazing tuba.”

But the finale, “with its flag-waving, gaudy tune rocking back and forth between the pianos” is everything you could want from two, 30-foot grand pianos barreling down an open road – “a gradually accelerating race to the finish, with the tonalities flipping back and forth from major to minor, urging those gleaming black vehicles on to their final ecstasy.”

It’s the perfect ending to a wild experience where, as the composer says, “Beethoven and Rachmaninoff soak in the same warm bath with Liberace, Wagner, the Supremes, Charles Ives and John Philip Sousa.”

Like all minimalist works, Grand Pianola Music presents considerable challenges to performers who spend their days with more traditional styles. “I’m not convinced that players like to play this stuff,” Polochick says. “They find it mentally and physically tiring. But you really have to love this piece. It’s so much fun, and so energizing.”

Concert Artists of Baltimore

Where: Gordon Center for Performing Arts, 3506 Gwynnbrook Ave., Owings Mills

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Tickets: $18 to $25; $8 students; $5 ages 8 to 18

Call: 410-625-3525

Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun ]]> http://www.cabalto.org/adams-bruckner-are-tied-together-without-strings-unlikely-programming-makes-sense-to-polochick/feed/ 0 http://www.cabalto.org/no-strings-attached/ http://www.cabalto.org/no-strings-attached/#comments Thu, 30 Aug 2012 18:20:24 +0000 CAB http://www.desotopaper.com/CAB/?p=325 Written by Tim Smith, The Baltimore Sun    Thursday, 09 December 2004 12:08

  On Saturday night at the Gordon Center in Owings Mills, the Concert Artists of Baltimore started off with Bruckner’s Mass in E minor from 1866, a work of richly layered harmonies, stirring melodic lines and imaginative wind instrument accompaniment. It glows with the sincerity of a true believer.

Edward Polochick led his finely honed chorus and attentive wind ensemble in a warmly shaded performance that reflected Bruckner’s originality at every turn of phrase.

To complete the theme of this program, Polochick offered another item that eschews string instruments – John Adams’ Grand Pianola Music from 1982. With two pianos as protagonists, winds and percussion as primary partners, and three amplified singers as extra backup and coloring, this minimalist score delivers a great kick.

Grand Pianola Music is never just about harmonic directness, reiteration and motion. It throws in abstraction, eloquence and wit as well to make an arresting statement.

Polochick didn’t get a firmly in-gear response from the ensemble at the start, but the performance soon settled into a comfortable groove and reached an exhilarating lift in the finale. Pianists Clinton Adams and Jonathan Moyer proved brave and sturdy, matched in force by the other players.

Sopranos Ah Hong, Sara Berger and Yoo Jin Jeong articulated their almost entirely wordless lines brightly and tightly to maximize the pleasures in this masterpiece of minimalism.

Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun ]]> http://www.cabalto.org/no-strings-attached/feed/ 0 http://www.cabalto.org/from-bso-a-messiah-with-power/ http://www.cabalto.org/from-bso-a-messiah-with-power/#comments Thu, 30 Aug 2012 18:19:08 +0000 CAB http://www.desotopaper.com/CAB/?p=323 Written by Tim Smith, The Baltimore Sun    Wednesday, 15 December 2004 12:05

  Since its premiere 262 years ago, Handel’s Messiah has gone from an Easter piece to a predominantly Christmas one. Just about any number of singers and instrumentalists has had a go at the score, from the intimate scale the composer would have known to the gargantuan level the Victorians adored.

Preferences in tempos have gone from brisk to glacial and back to brisk. Tastes in solo vocal lines have gone from freely ornamented to only what’s written and back to freely ornamented.

Conductor Edward Polochick has honed his distinctive approach to the piece over the years that combines some of the most effective – and most out-there – interpretive choices.

Polochick’s version has been presented annually with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. It returned last night at the Meyerhoff to irresistible effect, with his disciplined and responsive Concert Artists of Baltimore Symphonic Chorale joining the orchestra, along with four unusually vivid soloists.

The performance produced a jolt early on, when concertmaster Jonathan Carney launched into a florid solo in the overture, and the expressive energy never slackened.

The conductor’s preference for propulsion proved particularly ear-grabbing. A radar detector would have registered at least 120 in the traditionally 50-mph zones of “And He shall purify” and other choruses.

But clarity of articulation, or weightiness of texts, rarely suffered in the rush. Polochick was not entirely against repose, and when he did slow the speed, the contrast helped to underline the drama in the music.

The conductor got consistently shining work from his chorus, richly nuanced playing from the chamber-size contingent of BSO players.

The solo quartet offered a solid sampling of today’s up-and-coming vocal artists. Eric Cutler’s lower register tended to fade out, but the rest of the tenor’s voice bloomed beautifully; his exquisite phrasing in “Comfort ye my people” was but one memorable example.

When it came to low notes, contralto Meredith Arwady had them to spare. Her descent into the depths at the end of “He was despised” made a striking effect. She added many other telling touches to her solos.

Soprano Carolyn Betty and bass-baritone David Pittsinger proved adept at ornamenting their lines, too (she wasn’t above throwing in some Italian opera flourishes). Although both seemed to tire somewhat, their singing was as stylish and communicative as that of their colleagues.

In the end, this is as much Polochick’s Messiah as Handel’s. The individuality might be too much for some tastes, but I found myself as riveted to every measure as I was the first time I heard it a few years ago.

The 2 1/2 -hour performance seems to pass by in “the twinkling of an eye.”

Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun ]]> http://www.cabalto.org/from-bso-a-messiah-with-power/feed/ 0