BSO’s strong start lags at finish Teen pianist proves opening night jewel

Every season is a contradiction, but none so much as autumn. Our dying summer gardens remind us to steady ourselves for the icy grip of winter, yet children jump into piles of orange leaves and prepare for joyous Halloween.

In this bipolar mood, it was perhaps appropriate that the first concert of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra’s 109th season Sunday afternoon at the Maine Center for the Arts included Felix Mendelssohn’s first piano concerto as well as Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky’s last symphony. In these two pieces, the range of human experience is bookended between a composer at the beginning of his career and one within months of the end of his life.

After a few welcoming remarks by BSO President James Goff and Executive Director Susan Jonason, conductor Xiao-Lu Li took the stage to warm applause.

Beginning the concert with an exciting overture like that from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera I Vespri Siciliani worked very well. The piece opened in a somber mood with military sounding drums. Fragments of marches and death chants built into a frenzy of sound, which left the audience excited and ready for more music.

Next came a real jewel of a performance, as guest pianist 13-year-old Ji-Yong came to the stage to perform Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 25 in G minor. Admittedly, the audience was ready to like this assured young performer before he even began to play. There is something about a prodigy that has drawn cooing crowds of listeners since the time of Mozart and before. Sometimes the acclaim is undeserved. Other times, as in Ji-Yong’s case, it is, indeed, well-deserved.

Ji-Yong played with concentrated emotion, hunching into the keyboard as raptly as many another young teen at a computer game console. In the quietly melodic sections, the young pianist tended to lean back, experiencing every delicate nuance.

The orchestra was quite wonderful throughout this piece, performing with energy, delicacy and enthusiasm.

After concluding with one of Mendelssohn’s ever-so-satisfying codas, Ji-Yong and the members of the orchestra were instantly rewarded with a thunder of applause and a standing ovation.

If the concert had ended there, this reviewer could be wholeheartedly positive. However, after the intermission, Maestro Li and the symphony returned to the MCA stage to take on a musical monster, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, Op. 74 in B minor. This monumental work, also called the Pathetique, is a monster of emotion, of grand scale and of sustained intensity. Perhaps, this time, the monster was a bit too much to handle.

Although exciting to listen to as a whole, the orchestra seemed to lose its punch and timing. While the brasses have improved since last year, the usually perfect woodwinds seemed a bit shrill, the flutes a bit breathy, and the clarinet a tad out of tune.

The symphony ended as autumn does, with a slow dying away into winter and death and silence. As the audience applauded and stood for one last ovation, I wished for an encore, something light, optimistic, something reminding us that spring will come again. But there was nothing more.

Helen York is a writer and former classical music announcer. She can be contacted at heyork@hotmail.com