Conductor hits all the right notes in audition

Stephen Gunzenhauser, candidate for the position of music director at the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, conducted Sunday at the Maine Center for the Arts. And one word comes to mind after hearing his performance.

Finally.

Here’s a musician who combines flair, skill, stamina and direction. Clearly, Gunzenhauser knows what he wants and knows how to get it.

He took off like a bronco with Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol, Opus 34. His interpretation of the opening Alborada, the morning song of Spanish folk music, would wake the dead with its kicking beats and riotous pace.

The sheer force of six percussionists made the adrenalin flow. Timpani, drums, cymbals and triangle sprang forth with a sharpness and animation that rang with authority. The flutes, clarinets, piccolo, trumpets, harp and pouncing strings added a willowy, soulful quality. It may have been based on Spanish folk music, and given a part-Italian, part-Spanish title, but this caprice had the lively stamp of Russian folksongs.

And Gunzenhauser was right therebowing, turning and twisting with his command of rhythm and fiery speed. The audience, so excited by the rousing music, began applauding before the piece ended.

One would think there would be only one place to go after such a smashing start, but Gunzenhauser turned to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Opus 36. He kept the sound crisp and clean. When it was big, as in the first and last movements, it was very big. And when the music called for broadness and gentleness, Gunzenhauser took it there with warmth and a bit of a bite.

Gunzenhauser’s choice for tempo — a fairly slow opening and clipped third and fourth movements — did exactly what it should do: make the orchestra sound good. He pulled the very best available from the Bangor Symphony musicians.

The second half of the concert was devoted to Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Opus 95 (“from the New World”). Gunzenhauser has a keen interest in Dvorak, and his enthusiasm for the Czech composer filled this work with all of the nuances that Dvorak must have intended in a symphony of “impressions and greetings from the New World.”

A mixture of ethnic forms — from Native American, to black American, to home-on-the-range-type strains — the “New World” symphony paints an epic portrait of an expanse that is free and brave and wild like we can only know anymore through music such as this.

And Gunzenhauser glided through the terrain like an eagle soaring through its home territory. In the second movement, the sound was so delicate and certain that no one dared move. And the final allegro con fuoco was, indeed, on fire. The rumbling timpani, the calls of horns and trombones, the galloping strings made the ending both sinister and sweet.