Warsaw Sinfonia one more MCA gem

The Warsaw Sinfonia made its local debut Saturday at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono and performed under Maestro Krzysztof Penderecki (pronounced -etsky) to a smallish audience of a couple hundred people. But the concert, which featured one of the conductor’s recent compositions, was a big one in terms of this season’s programming and the standard of excellence in classical music developing at the Maine Center. Few venues in the state can rival the quality of classical music concerts at the Maine Center in recent years, and groups such as the Warsaw Sinfonia are the reason why.

There was much to admire in the performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Overture for “The Creatures of Prometheus,” which opened the program. Penderecki led the musicians seamlessly through tragedy and nobility and felicity. A more closely sculpted drama could only be found in an actual opera. If there was a brightness lacking in the sound at times, the pacing made up for it, and the pieces that would follow on the program attested to the sharpness this 40-piece orchestra can accomplish.

Allison Eldredge, a 24-year-old American cellist, was sonorously provocative in her performance during Camille Saint-Saens’ Concerto for Cello No. 1 in A minor. A wildly expressive player, Eldredge rocked her cello through a grippingly dramatic reading filled with unmistakably imaginative detail that demanded, rather than invited, attention. Her gutsy fervor was the result of a hypersensitive command of each note rather than incisive tempo. The orchestra was similarly refined here, and the performance was both vivid and memorable for its warmth and flair.

Certainly the highlight of the evening was the performance of Penderecki’s Sinfonietta per archi, translated as “small symphony for strings.” Pounding rhythms, blaring contrasts and mounting tension gave this work a mysterious and ominous mood. A sensual melody that was both haunting and sweet swept through each string section, like an echo of sound moving down an empty subway tunnel.

The effect, which at first might have seemed too outrageously abstract to be accessible, was, indeed, powerfully engaging and communicative. Penderecki’s work has been charged with being effect-making for its own sake, but the intensity and shape of this 12-minute symphony conveyed an inventive musicality and purpose beyond that.

A briskness overtook the orchestra for Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 in A major (the “Italian” symphony). There was gallant spontaneity and sparkle. In fact, so vivacious was the performance that Penderecki (one of the few maestros who conducts with his left hand) dropped his baton in the second movement. There was, of course, no interruption in the flow of the music and a musician returned the baton to Penderecki between movements. But it’s indicative of how the piece was moving along at a clipped pace.

The Mendelssohn seemed to set the stage for three rollicking encores — the pastorale from Beethoven’s “Prometheus,” the gavotte from Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, and the overture from Rossini’s “The Italian Girl in Algiers.” Another encore would simply have left the audience exhausted rather than excited and sated.