BSO playing spirited

If you attended Sunday’s Bangor Symphony Orchestra concert at the Maine Center for the Arts, chances are you found yourself asking some very nonmusical questions. The big one being: Should young children go to symphony concerts, which are still bastions of propriety when it comes to being quiet and contained?

Let’s say the program includes Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra and is narrated by a children’s celebrity, such as Rick Charette, which was the case Sunday. Then, of course, children should be present and celebrated.

But let’s say the programming also includes William Walton’s heady Concerto for Viola and Edward Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 34 (“Enigma” Variations) — both of which were also on yesterday’s program.

Now you’ve got a problem because the answer to the question about children isn’t going to come as easily — unless you’re sitting right in front of a chatty, restless tyke.

I won’t pretend to have an answer here, and it’s true that the concert was not advertised for children in particular. (There are, in fact, three youth concerts scheduled for today.) But the programming at yesterday’s concert did split the audience. There were parents who wanted their kids to have the symphony experience, and there were regular concertgoers who simply wanted to hear music. So it was hard to know exactly who the target audience was for this event, and that was a bit detracting.

None of that, however, addresses the actual performance, which was infused with spirited playing and exciting paces. Although the entire symphony was at its best for both the Britten and the Elgar, it would be fair to say that the woodwinds were in particularly good shape for this concert. Kristen Finkbeiner was notably eloquent in Elgar’s charming passage for solo clarinet, and the percussion section, which was large and rambunctious, snapped away with some admirably unbridled flair.

Conductor Christopher Zimmerman cut the orchestra loose for the final passages of A Young Person’s Guide. One might have liked to hear some humor out of bubble-gum guy Charette, but he handled the narration with the gentle, educational tone that has won him plenty of tiny fans in Maine.

Britten’s variations were a spot-on thematic companion to the variations of Elgar’s “Enigma,” which Zimmerman similarly conducted with a correct balance of spunk and grace. The musicians moved smoothly from opulent melancholy to eruptive joyfulness, though the piece could have gone even further with the playfulness.

Guest soloist Rivka Golani, who performed Walton’s Concerto for Viola, gave a strong, involving performance. Recognized as one of the great violists of her time, Golani’s technique was powerfully intense but she was a perplexing figure. Her authoritative ability was clear, yet she came across as somewhat disengaged from the audience. That doesn’t steal from the sound of the music, but it does compromise the heart of it. Golani was most convincing in the final movement, which had a certain gypsy sensuality to it that she caught completely with her expressive playing and undistorted pace.