Symphony plays it ‘modern’

ORONO – In the 1960s it became fashionable to don campy 1940s vintage clothing. In the 1970s leather jackets and other paraphernalia from the 1950s came into style. It seems apparent that there is a pattern in the cycles of fashion.

Perhaps there is a similar pattern in the cycles of musical acceptance. Now that it is officially the 21st century we possibly are free to appreciate the music of the prior century. Whether that is strictly accurate or not, it is true that a program of music written entirely in the 20th century drew one of the largest and most enthusiastic audiences of the season to the Maine Center for the Arts Sunday afternoon.

Before the Bangor Symphony Orchestra concert, three buses filled with music lovers from Belfast, Ellsworth and Houlton spilled out passengers into the tide of humanity moving into the center. The main floor was nearly filled and the balcony was seated nearly to the rafters, a heart-warming sight.

In his opening remarks, Tom Johnston, president of the board, thanked several local sponsors of the symphony and of the concert. His mention of the group of classical radio stations known as WBACH was rewarded with a spontaneous outburst of applause.

The first piece of the evening was performed by the strings of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra with no percussion, brass or woodwinds. The “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,” written in 1908 by Ralph Vaughan Williams, sounds deceptively simple. Much of the piece is made up of sonorous blocks of chords, unison playing and thematic color changes like light seen shifting on a distant landscape as clouds move over the sun. Against this larger landscape is set smaller sections of the orchestra and a few solo instrumental voices.

The strings of the BSO performed this work superbly. The section playing was lush, rich and passionate, with concertmaster Lynn Brubaker, and the other soloists providing bursts of surface decoration against the larger tonal fabric.

After a bit of rearrangement on stage, Christopher Zimmerman, guest soloist Yolanda Kondonassis and the symphony, including brass, winds and percussion, took the stage for a performance of Alberto Ginastera’s Harp Concerto, Opus 25. Kondonassis quickly riveted the attention of the audience not only by her brilliant playing but by the very expressiveness of her every move.

During this piece the strings of the huge concert harp are played in nearly every conceivable fashion: Plucked individually, played as chords, as muted notes, as rapid arpeggios and swirling glissandos, and every sound was accompanied by dancelike motions of the soloist’s arms, wrists, hands and even her feet.

This concerto is filled with emotion, but emotion on the dark side of the palette, and Kondonassis and the BSO took the audience from languid sorrow to deep despair, and from a touch of uneasiness to the frightening surreal quality of a dream gone bad.

The third movement was somewhat marred by the overpowering percussion section, whose members, while playing quite engagingly themselves, nearly managed to drown the soloist in a barrage of drum beats.

After several stage calls and a standing ovation, Kondonassis returned for a brief encore, playing a piece by Carlos Salzedo – “for those who are a little more melodically driven,” she said. This was a fun piece to watch being performed, as the Spanish rhythms in it are at one point emphasized by castanetlike drumming on the wooden body of the instrument.

Again, Kondonassis performed with elegance and verve.

The final piece of the evening was the Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Opus 43 by Jean Sibelius. In a few remarks prior to the performance, director Christopher Zimmerman explained that the piece builds tension and excitement by continuing its instability.

“Sibelius used these melodic fragments like slabs of music,” Zimmerman said. “He fits them together but badly, so they are always threatening to collapse and then he pulls it together at the end.”

Once again the symphony was excellent, especially the members of the brass section who gave the sonorous anthemic themes of Sibelius great depth and passion. The piece does seem like a series of great trial and error experiments that the composer brings together at the conclusion in a great burst of triumphant sound.

This was definitely one of the good ones.

The next performance of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra will be at the Maine Center for the Arts on April 22, featuring a pair of works by Haydn and pieces by Beethoven and Shostakovich. For information, call the Maine Center for the Arts at 581-1755.