BSO serves up season finale

Music is like food. There is the piquant appetizer of the etude, and the wholesomely uplifting meat and potatoes of the pastorale. And although not fattening, there is even the musical equivalent of the mega-calorie, divinely decadent, death by chocolate extravaganza with extra whipped cream. It may not be healthy, but giving in to the indulgence of an all-out, over the top romantic lollapalooza every once in a while really hits the spot.

If music is like food, then Sunday afternoon’s season-closing concert by the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, guest pianist Jeffrey Biegel and nine young All-State Musicians was a three-course feast. Performing before a packed house at the Maine Center for the Arts in Orono, director Xiao Lu-Li led the BSO and the All-State Musicians through a first course of Borodin’s “In the Steppes of Central Asia.”

Beginning and ending with a thin keening from the strings like the sound of wind in tall grass, this piece was the salad course of the feast, unfortunately sounding more like a soggy trudge through a swamp than a brisk gallop across the steppes. Saving this piece from total mediocrity were the ever wonderful BSO violins and woodwinds.

Next on the program was a tasty rhythmic casserole, the seldom performed Symphony No. 2, Opus 55 by Camille Saint-Saens. The first movement featured fine work by the entire ensemble as the main theme was picked up, restated and repeated from voice to voice and from section to section in a wonderfully energetic fugue. In the second movement an intentionally hesitant melody evoked a sense of innocent exploration, which resolved into a good-natured dance in the following Scherzo. By the time the orchestra began the final Prestissimo, they were in fine form, with an especially nice violin duet from Lynn Brubaker and Mary Jo Carlsen.

After the intermission, the audience was ready for dessert, and guest artist Biegel provided a passion-drenched performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Opus 18 in C minor with finesse, elegance and fluidity. This piece contains at least two of the world’s most recognized melodies, and if played with anything less than total abandonment to emotion, it can seem like a caricature. Not this time. Biegel played with the darting precision and deadly grace of a fencer, serving up delicious combinations of pathos, passion and transcendence. The BSO, with the exception of a badly flat flute passage, was excellent as well. Of special note were French horn player Scott Burditt and reed players Louis Hall, Laura Green Estey and Danielle Allie.

After an enthusiastic standing ovation and at least four calls to the stage, Biegel, who had just played an exhausting piano concerto lasting more than a half-hour, somehow had the energy to grace the audience with a wonderfully fiery Chopin “Polonaise.”

As director Li said before the concert, it was wonderful to see all the seats of the MCA filled, and even more wonderful to see youthful faces in both the audience and on stage. As part of the orchestra’s outreach program, more young people, more than 4,000 of them, will get a chance to hear the BSO in a series of special youth concerts to be held today. And although the official season of the Bangor symphony has concluded, there will be special performances of Thomas Oboe Lee’s Symphony No. 6, “The Penobscot River,” at both Millinocket and Bucksport in June.

For more information on these concerts, guest artist Biegel, or the Bangor Symphony Orchestra in general, visit www.bangorsymphony.com.