BSO engages in vivid, frenetic dance with Fate

If Fate (with a capital F) comes knocking at your door, here’s hoping it has all the sexy, vexing moves of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, which was among the works that opened the Bangor Symphony Orchestra’s classical concert season Sunday at the Maine Center for the Arts. Tchaikovsky wrote the piece during a testy time in his life, when he was determined to marry and did so before he had found the right wife. Fate, it turns out, was his inspiring theme.

Somewhere between composing the first and second movements (when the marriage had disbanded), he tried killing himself by walking waist high into the frigid waters of the Moscow River. It may have been a tepid approach to destruction, but from it came a hot orchestral piece filled with cloudbursts of emotion and a swaggery dance with Hope.

Sunday’s performance, under the direction of Christopher Zimmerman, was proof that Tchaikovsky’s symphony can be enthralling and brilliantly alive even if the rhythms take unexpected turns. In the first movement, Zimmerman called the shots with halting slowness. The restraint in the second movement and the wooly approach to the pizzicato strings and military brass of the third set the stage for the fourth, which was a headlong plunge into dizzying quickness. That last movement kept getting louder and faster and more frenzied, and it was the type of hectic finale that can, after all, be thrilling to hear.

It’s no surprise that audience members were united in an up-and-clapping response. But that wasn’t the first time they had found a way out of their seats in the afternoon. Soloist Pavel Sporcl got them there with an expressive performance of Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor. Although you couldn’t exactly call Sporcl’s read charming, you can call it vivid and intricate. Most important, he has a youthful bounce that is mercurial without being vulgar.

Sporcl is also a muscly player, which may account for the string he popped early on in the performance. He swiftly handed the injured instrument to the concertmaster, who handed it to the next violinist, who exchanged it with violinist Anatole Wieck, who slipped offstage to make a fast repair. All the while, Sporcl continued with the esprit of a true headliner. At the next movement, he resumed playing on the restrung violin and seamlessly finished the concert. Although his was not the only wayward string of the afternoon, it was a nutty version of musical chairs — except with violins.

The overture from Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino,” which opened the program, is just the kind of zippy little piece that the BSO tackles with reliable force. There was plenty of bloomy color is this performance, but the afternoon, as a whole, found the musicians in fine color. It was a rotund and successful day for the players — for instance, Beth Wiemann on clarinet, Kenneth Mumme on bassoon, Louis Hall on oboe — who irresistibly found jazz and delicacy in assuring places.