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The Bangor Symphony Orchestra took stage at the Collins Center for the Arts Sunday. They pleased their audience with a musical performance featuring varied forms and unorthodox twists to facilitate crowd interaction.
Under the direction of Robert Franz, the orchestra mesmerized hundreds of attendees with musical masterpieces by composers Finzi, Brahms and Mendelssohn. In his conductor’s note, Franz speaks of a “singing dark quality” to look for in many of the pieces they would perform.
Before the show began, Franz informed his audience that he strove to implement a different approach to Gerald Finzi’s “Three Soliloquies from Love’s Labours Lost.” Franz insisted this approach would further accentuate the soliloquies’ meanings of being in love, no longer being in love and never having been in love. This new approach brought three narrators to the stage alongside the orchestra. They gave poetic readings of Shakespeare’s soliloquies, providing a vocally interactive element with the orchestra and audience.
“It provided for a good rapport with the audience,” said John Grant, an audience member and supporter of the BSO. “I better understood what was meant by the music; this element is very important to audiences.”
The music, coupled with the readings evoking Finzi’s intended message, captivated audience members in a two-fold way. Franz’s direction depicted of the implicit meanings in musical performance.
“You can almost feel the sun on your face in Edwardian England as you listen to this music,” Franz said in his director’s notes.
Evident from his elegant, fluid body language on stage, Franz painted a picture through sound. The orchestra was a medium through which Franz relayed the meanings of the music. Often with eyes closed, he showed audience members how to understand the music through the various emotions felt from it.
In their rendition of Johannes Brahm’s “Concerto for Violin and Cello in A Minor,” the BSO was joined by expert violinist Chee-Yun and cellist Alisa Wielerstein. The two soloists and the orchestra played interchangeably. Tone and volume shifted continuously between the orchestra and the soloists.
“Those two soloists were in such harmony with each other,” Grant said. “They were absolutely phenomenal.”
The concerto carries its own meaningful history. Brahms chose to feature both violin and cello because they represented one of his complex relationships. Brahms’ wife had an affair with his best friend — the music represented his forgiveness to these individuals. Spectators witnessed this emotionally heartfelt story through the variety of ways the two instruments were played individually, in dialogue and in opposition to each other.
Most interesting was how the orchestra was second in importance throughout Brahms’ masterpiece. They played a crucial role but were to be regarded as a third partner to the two soloists. Brahms’ emotional connections to his wife and friend were felt primarily through the violin and cello.
Their last piece, Mendelssohn’s “Symphony No. 3 in A minor,” was an overture evoking the composer’s emotional reaction to the darkness of a Scottish castle he visited in 1829. “You can almost feel and smell the damp darkness of this site of love and intrigue in the opening bars of the music,” Franz said.
