Northeast Wisconsin Music Review

Birch Creek Music Performance Center

Symphony Series

Egg Harbor , WI

June 22 & 23, 2007

European Flair

No doubt about it. The lady, Lucia Matos, is a conductor of exceptional musicianship and a leader who makes clear to her colleagues exactly what she wants. And what she wants invariably serves each composer’s requirements.

In filling in for Brian Groner this week, Matos excited audiences and gained the affection and appreciation of faculty and students by illuminating some difficult scores and letting them shine forth with untarnished splendor. In how many other instances can one even consider describing a symphony orchestra two-thirds of whose musicians are high school age students as resplendent? Here, in all candor, one must.

The program began with the customary student chamber performances before the main event. Altogether charming was a boogie (of all things) improvised by pianists Emily Durham and Gregory Hanford.

The concert began with the Polovetsian Dances from Borodin’s sprawling opera, “Prince Igor.” Matos drew forth languorous evening contemplation, campfire flames reaching ever higher, fiery dancers swirling about them – the entire panoply of activity and colors with which the composer suffused this music. The Birch Creek orchestra played with rapt attention and tonal allure. Thoroughly winning.

Next, with Betty Lewis continuing her first-half role as concertmistress, BC’s regular concertmaster, Robert Hanford stepped into solo mode as he performed Henryk Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor – stunningly. Hanford , Lyric Opera of Chicago Concertmaster, has set the seal on that orchestra’s ascent into the Big Three of opera ensembles world-wide, the other two being the Metropolitan’s and the Wiener Staatsopera’s. With faultless technique, temperament aplenty and vibrant, ineffably beautiful tone, he filled out every phrase in virtuoso fashion. Wieniawski was himself a player to rival Paganini and peppered this work with daunting complexities. Hanford mastered all of them from the fire-breathing conclusion to the first movement, through the coiled, but longing Romance and on to the febrile stretch of the Finale, played dashingly á la Zingara. Just playing fast doesn’t guarantee excitement, but this performance bristled with it. Matos led the by-no-means-simple accompaniment with utmost skill, marking clearly the carefully-wrought detail that complements the solo line so well. In some six decades, we’ve heard perhaps three or four performances at this level. None finer, however. The audience response was appropriately explosive.

For Antonin Dvoøák’s wonderful Eight Symphony in G major, Matos shaped a marvelously coherent interpretation, one sagaciously paced and shot through with Czech feeling and sensitivity. The elliptical phrases in the first movement were handsomely bound together and the character was truly “con brio.” In the Adagio, one could not put out of mind the notion of “lush strings.” Yes, one had to say it, for the sound was genuinely rich and homogenous – something almost unimaginable in a student/faculty ensemble. The Allegretto third movement, another of the composer’s most imaginative inventions, was generously “grazioso” in character, its waltz-time phrases lifting and sighing beguilingly. A resounding trumpet fanfare sparked the Allegro finale which moved forward with fierce energy and biting attacks. Right to its powerful concluding measures, this was a strong, impeccably-argued performance, superbly played (save for one passing moment of interrupted coordination).

So, two for two this opening week. That’s impressive. (Erik Eriksson)