BSO show to go on – with guest conductor

BANGOR – There is a cartoon in which a band leader stands in front of a group of musicians. All are covered with debris amid the remnants of a concert hall that has just collapsed around and upon them. The musicians are tattered, their instruments battered, and the conductor says only, “All right … let’s try it again from the top.”

After an early blizzard forced the cancellation of Emmanuel Plasson’s guest appearance with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra back in October, it was feared that area residents would have to miss the opportunity to see the gifted young conductor in a local venue. But as in the cartoon, the Symphony and Plasson are taking it again from the top, bringing the program to the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono in a concert at 3 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 6.

Adele Anderson, director of marketing for the BSO, said Plasson was very disappointed when the original concert was canceled.

“He had been in his hotel room with the curtains closed and didn’t even know it was snowing until someone called him to say the concert had been canceled,” said Anderson. “He thought it was a practical joke at first, until he looked out the window and saw all

that snow for himself.”

According to Anderson, Plasson has gone out of his way to rearrange his professional schedule to return to Bangor for this concert.

For his age, the 35-year-old maestro has quite a professional schedule, including a recent series of performances at Covent Garden in London through the month of December. He has also conducted the Royal Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall. This past spring, he recorded his premiere compact disc, directing the Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie.

“I think you have to be born with it to some extent,” Emmanuel Plasson says of conducting, “It is something so simple and so complex at the same time and it takes so long to really master everything.”

If anyone can be said to have been born with it, it would be Plasson, whose father is the celebrated conductor Michel Plasson.

“My family moved to the city of Toulouse in 1968 because my father got a job conducting the Toulouse Orchestra, and he’s been there ever since,” Plasson said.

After early studies with the violin at the Toulouse Conservatory, young Plasson went on to study performance at the Guildhall School in London and at the Vienna Hochschule. One of the turning points in his career came when he decided to attend the Pierre Monteux School in Hancock.

“I was really lucky to go there. I was in France when I heard about it. My father’s assistant mentioned this school, and I did four summers there. Really wonderful, really tough,” Plasson recalled. “We used to say, among the students, that if you can survive the school as a conductor, you can basically face any kind of situation, any orchestra, anything later on. It’s a great advantage.”

“As you can see,” Plasson said with a laugh, “Maine is quite special to me and I am glad to have another experience in Maine with the Bangor Symphony. I am really looking forward to this concert!”

The concert will feature three works, Aaron Copland’s “Quiet City,” Mozart’s “Clarinet Concerto” and Mendelssohn’s “Symphony No. 3,” also known as the Scottish Symphony.

The Copland work will feature BSO musicians Bill Whitener and Laura Green, in a work which Plasson calls a real masterpiece of American music. “Copland uses the minimum of elements to do something so simple, yet so effective and moving,” he said.

According to Plasson, “The Mozart Clarinet Concerto, the last concerto he wrote, shows us all the best Mozart skills. It is like a wonderful opera for just one voice, the voice of the clarinet.”

Bringing his own considerable genius to the performance will be New York clarinetist Igor Begelman. Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Begelman studied at the Manhattan School of Music and the Juilliard School of Music, and has performed recitals in Japan, Israel and throughout Europe.

Of Mendelssohn’s “Symphony No. 3,” Plasson points out that it was written after the composer visited Scotland, and was inspired by the rugged landscapes, fogs and mists of the Highlands, “I think this is one of his best works, more complex than the ‘Italian Symphony,’ which is fast and flashy, but doesn’t have the depth of this one.”

The rescheduled concert begins at 3 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 6, at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono. All tickets reserved for the original concert will be honored, and a few seats are still available.