Symphony orchestra’s performance alive with an elemental intensity

Listening to Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7, arguably the Czech composer’s most famous piece, is like watching a hurricane roll in. Just hard rain, at first, followed by a burst of thunder and lightning and wind, threatening to uproot trees and blow down houses. Then the eye passes over, and there’s tranquility for a few moments, before returning to the intensity of the beginning.

The Bangor Symphony Orchestra captured the elemental nature of Dvorak’s symphony on Sunday afternoon in a vigorous, exultant performance that rattled the roofs of Peakes Auditorium. Full of fanfares and dramatic crescendos, it’s a piece that demands a great deal of energy and technical precision from its players. Trumpeters William Whitener and John Furman, and French horn players Scott Burditt and Kenneth Miller gave rousing punctuation to both the turbulent first and last movements, and the lively scherzo third movement.

Maestro Xiao-Lu Li asked audience members to think about patriotism and love as the BSO performed, and sure enough, images of battle, labor, family, as well as both tragedy and success flooded through my mind as I listened. The Symphony No. 7 is not a particularly subtle piece, but it is stirring, slightly imposing and ultimately very effective.

Opening the concert – the third in the BSO’s 112th season of classical concerts – was a brief, lovely composition by Sir Edward Elgar. If Dvorak’s Symphony is a hurricane, Elgar’s “Serenade Mauresque” is a breezy summer evening, full of both shadows and light. Written on “Moorish” themes, it’s romantic, mysterious and evocative – and the BSO set the mood very well, using a light touch to convey the sense of exotic whimsy.

In between the Dvorak and Elgar was Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622, featuring guest clarinet soloist Alexander Fiterstein. Fiterstein is smooth – very smooth. His unwaveringly creamy, even, assured tone was sustained from the bouncy, light first movement through to the more well-known adagio second movement, before arriving, triumphant, at the fierce, athletic ending.