BSO performs roof-raising concert in season debut

If you happened to be near the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono on Sunday afternoon, you may have seen the roof of the concert hall pulsing slightly upward. That’s because inside Maestro Xiao-Lu Li, conductor of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, was leading the musicians in a roof-raising program to kick off the 108th concert season.

In particular, Li gave booming volume to a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2. Anyone looking for delicacy in this piece was simply at the wrong venue. Li went for the gusto, the rip-roaring, the gigantic, unleashing the bolder side of this late-Romantic work. If there was an occasional shrillness during the peaks in the volume, all was forgiven by the sweeping nature of Li’s exuberance. If we’ve learned anything about Li after his inaugural season last year, it is that he loves to touch the sky, and Rachmaninoff can take the stretch, especially with the brass, woodwinds and strings molding such spacious sounds.

It was, apparently, an afternoon of largeness – beginning with a drumroll that initiated a vibrant rendition of the national anthem. While that patriotic paean may have left the audience filled with pride and hope, “XL,” by Portland-based composer J. Mark Scearce, dove into deeper, more ominous territory. This heart-beating orchestral soliloquy premiered with the North Carolina Symphony in September 2001, but was written before the devastating events of that month.

“XL” has something of a foreboding, cautionary theme with low rhythms and driving speed. It also sounds a bit like music you might hear in a James Bond movie, a prelude to suspense, intrigue or a world gone awry. “XL,” a title intended to abbreviate the word “excel,” also might be called “extra large,” because it is a contemporary composition with currency and resonance. Li is not the first person to pair “XL” with the national anthem, but it is an apt and powerful combination for these times.

As if all that weren’t extra large enough, the irrefutable knockout of the concert was the coupling of the BSO with Corey Cerovsek, a virtuoso violinist who seriously channeled the wizardry of Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1. The BSO made no small contribution to the success of the Paganini, playing the rich supporting role with solidity and grace.

But clearly Cerovsek, a stylist to his center, was the perfect talent to take on this pyrotechnic romp of pizzicatos. With the bounce of his bow, he made the instrument chirp and laugh, had confidence untainted by high bravado, certainty without smugness. It was a bright reading, one so fiery that, by the end, Cerovsek broke a string on the violin, a mishap that made him all the more beloved to the audience. (Cerovsek further endeared himself by sitting in with the violin section for the Rachmaninoff.)

A fun sidebar to those interested in the intersection of music and visual art: At the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., a modern sculpture called “To Hell with Paganini,” made in 1966 by the French-born artist Arman, depicts a charred violin suspended in resin. After the Cerovsek-BSO performance, one can see the point of the artwork. This is music so hot it burns.

The afternoon ended with an encore performance of Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.”