By Glenn Pillsbury
October 17, 2009 12:00 AM
The program of Thursday evening's performance by the Stockton Symphony at Atherton Auditorium represented an organic process of growth, as the overall energy of the evening proceeded outward from one piece to the next.
Performing a relatively diverse combination of works, the orchestra played with an ever-increasing assuredness that culminated in a truly dance-like apotheosis. The program repeats tonight.
The opening "Holberg Suite," by Edvard Grieg, struggled to make its mark. Composed in the 1880s as a tribute to the 18th-century Danish poet Ludwig Holberg, the work is a romanticized version of a Baroque dance suite. Originally written for piano, Grieg later scored all five movements for strings alone.
While the opening "Prelude" movement initiates a pulsating drive, the ensuing movements labor to break out and really go somewhere. The all-string arrangement is largely to blame for this, as the textural similarity among movements makes the work sound like a overwrought, if inoffensive, string quartet.
Nevertheless, conductor Peter Jaffe led a responsive and well-balanced orchestra. The variety of solo moments scattered throughout the work were well done, particularly Christina Mok's deft handling of the tricky acrobatics in the final "Rigadoun" movement.
The orchestra then expanded to more regular instrumentation for Samuel Barber's violin concerto, featuring Rachel Barton Pine in the solo role.
Barber's concerto is something of an anti-concerto with its moderato opening and frequent retreats into mysterious melancholy. Much of the overall texture is also reminiscent of the composer's well-known "Adagio for Strings."
Pine, a world-renowned violinist, played with all the confidence, verve, and skill one might expect, even as she had to fight to be heard at times. Still, while she clearly demonstrated a huge range of expression, she might have pushed her 1742 Guarneri violin to produce a bit more power. Barber's music is on the delicate side, but too much delicateness and the solo becomes lost among the orchestra.
Overall though, Pine captured the early 20th-century aesthetic of the solo part nicely and sounded at ease, displaying a warm tone and a supple vibrato.
Where Pine really asserted herself was in the fiery final movement. Jaffe goosed the tempo right from the start and Pine's perpetual motion matched him note-for-note. The final stretch of the movement has the soloist enter at an even faster tempo and Pine raced her way to a rousing conclusion.
Returning to the stage, she treated the audience to one of her own compositions, a stunt-violin set of astoundingly technical variations on "God Defend New Zealand," that nation's national anthem.
Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 concluded the program. Famously described by Richard Wagner as the "apotheosis of the dance," the work's four movements bubble with rhythmic energy and benefited from some very fine solo work by flutist Johanna Borenstein and oboist Thomas Nugent.
Moreover, Jaffe conducted the piece from memory, an impressive strategy which always allows him more expressive freedom. Indeed, he doesn't conduct his way through the piece (though there was plenty of that) so much as he, himself, dances through it, especially in the joyous final movement.
Completely confident in the skill and experience of the musicians in the orchestra, he is able to focus on channeling the overall expressive contours of Beethoven's music into an engaging celebration of the human spirit.
Contact Glenn Pillsbury at features@recordnet.com.
