BSO’s fine prelude to spring> Beethoven uplifts, Stravinsky upsets

Spring could be flowers. Spring could be birdies and sunshine and little lambs. But, in the hands of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, which performed a classical concert Sunday at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono, spring is a detonation of sound.

In the first half of the program, the BSO presented Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F Major, also known as the “Pastoral.” Rightfully, music director Christopher Zimmerman rode this performance with visible pride in the musicians, who moved with grace between the tenderness and sneakiness of the season. Zimmerman began with congenial, folk song-inspired tempos in the first movement and, by the end, had blown up a thunderstorm.

The woodwinds were in smart shape for the responsibilities of birdlike tunes, which ranged from pounding to piercing to playful. The rugged rhythms of the strings readily communicated the bucolic scenes that Beethoven must have seen during his long, daily walks in the country. Zimmerman re-created those walks at a brisk pace, with only a few rocky spots in the brass section.

If Beethoven’s beloved symphony can be described as uplifting with all of its happy fecundity, Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” which took up the second half of the concert, might be said to be upsetting — in a good way. Indeed, Stravinsky wrote that one of the things he most loved about his homeland was “the violent Russian spring that seemed to begin in an hour and was like the whole earth cracking.”

In a friendly address to the audience, Zimmerman called the piece “formidable in a variety of ways.” It was no small pressure on Zimmerman that Nancy Monteux, the daughter of legendary conductor Pierre Monteux, who premiered “The Rite of Spring” 85 years ago in Paris, was in the audience. (Her father’s conducting school, where Zimmerman was once a student, still thrives in Hancock.)

The performance, which had only a few wobbly moments, was generally an elephantine success. Every romantic notion of the beauty of spring disappeared, and modern expressionism took over with its primitive beats and chaotic poetry. It was as if the musicians leapt into the primal soup of sound and stirred up some intensely serious depictions of a world gone awry. There were moments when every instrument in the orchestra went percussive, or when every player had to be a virtuoso in order for this demanding piece to fly. Indeed, when “The Rite of Spring” was first performed by the Ballets Russes in 1913, the uncomprehending audience rioted in the streets.

With all of that randomness and harshness, it’s easy to see why. Zimmerman, however, held the community musicians together and had listeners glued to their seats. In other words, the BSO gave a fine presentation of a work that points to some of the most significant principles of music in the early part of this century.