Bangor symphony augurs change of season

Conductor Christopher Zimmerman chose the perfect end-of-winter program for Sunday’s Bangor Symphony Orchestra concert at the Maine Center for the Arts.

OK, it’s not as if winter were really over here in Maine, but it’s nice to be musically reminded that the passage of seasons does occur, and that we can expect glorious changes in the weeks ahead.

To this end, the biggest undertaking of the afternoon was Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor, a piece that often moves so quickly that it dares you to catch a breath between beats.

From the philosophically grisly themes of the opening largo to the comic relief of the allegro movement and the banging, crashing, helter-skelter chase themes of the finale, the 6th jolted the audience into a good and wide-awake mood. As one woman left the hall, she commented that she liked “that kind of cowboy music.”

Seemed like every player got a chance to gallop in this piece, too. It was, in general, an impressive day for the woodwind and percussion sections, but the most admirable achievements belonged to the string players.

With exquisite deliberation and jamming energy, they charmed the ear with spidery ornamentation, and then bouncing, pounding, nearly psychotic, and sometimes achingly sweet, bass lines.

Guest soloist Blythe Walker sang Richard Strauss’ “Four Last Songs,” which sweep through “Spring,” “September,” “To Go to Sleep” and “Red Glow of the Evening” — titles that symbolically capture nature’s life cycle.

Walker’s soprano line was inextricably fused with the orchestra, so much so, in fact, that her lower notes often got overwhelmed by the instrumentals. When she hit the higher notes, her voice came in like a lion, but slipped away unremarkably and just beyond the reach of the listener in more ethereal moments.

The orchestra itself made small and beautiful sounds in its performance of Claude Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” a delicate miniature that calls upon the pastoral imagery of Stephane Mallarme’s poetry for its glissandos and tremolandos.

There was an unevenness in some of the solo passages, but generally the dreaminess and elegance made it easy to see why this piece was once a favorite among ballet dancers.