Northeast Wisconsin Music Review

Birch Creek Music Performance Center

Symphony Series

Egg Harbor , WI

June 30, 2007

Grand Finale

Grand Finale, that’s what the program heading stated – and it wasn’t misleading. The event had a valedictory air about it, a summation of two weeks of heated and superbly-accomplished music-making. Two iconic works for large orchestra surrounded the world premiere of a song cycle written for and performed by mezzo-soprano Cynthia Stiehl, making this a night of unquestioned importance.

As customary at the BC campus, student/faculty performances preceded the main event. Prominent among an assortment of lively items was twentieth century composer Witold Lutoslowski’s take on a Paganini Caprice, played by pianists Gregory Hanford and Jodie DeSalvo, student and faculty member, respectively.

The printed program began with a spacious and handsomely executed overture to Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger,” weighty and glowing in tone, rife with the score’s autumnal wisdom. Conductor Brian Groner made us long to hear him conduct the full opera.

The world premiere was Gustavo Leone’s “Mundo,” a two-section orchestral work for mezzo-soprano and orchestra. Leone, now Chicago-based, has written before for Birch Creek; a lovely score for solo harp and orchestra was premiered at Birch Creek in the immediate past and met with strong audience approval. “Mundo” proved a more complex score, sumptuously orchestrated and containing melodic fragments suggestive of pre-Columbian times. The first section, “Prelude: From Light to Darkness,” glides forward on a substantial, but intermittent, cushion of string tone yielding here and there to more intimate portions featuring only a few instruments. The difficult vocal part alternates between softly murmured incantations, high-lying lines calling for more forthright singing and spoken summations. The second section, “Sachaj la numac,” is similarly charged with barely-suppressed emotion, here laid over more percussive effects. Once again, the demands on the singer are estimable, requiring – among other things - certainty in identifying right pitches following orchestral interludes.

The concert was recorded and we hope that we might be able to secure a copy to hear again and study in detail Leone’s intricate and absorbing score, for this is a work that clearly contains more than can be revealed in one hearing. Cynthia Stiehl was quite superb in her mastery of the vocal part, sustaining some exceedingly long lines on one breath, bringing warmth and passion to her pleadings and soaring courageously whenever the melodic line went aloft. Brian Groner deftly sorted out the variegated strands and kept the rhythms clear and pungent while his orchestra did wonders in advocacy for the piece.

Although we have had little to quarrel about with Birch Creek over the years, the organization did a disservice to the composer and performers in not including an insert with good notes about the work (preferably from the composer) and full texts. Leone, likely noting their absence, talked briefly before the performance, but that cannot suffice, especially given the intricacy of his creation. We are satisfied that Leone has written an important work, one that will assuredly be taken up by adventurous singers in other venues. Its birth, however, should have been afforded the written explication it deserved – that would have significantly enhanced the experience for every audience member.

In the second half, Brian Groner led the BC Symphony in a commanding performance of Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 in C minor. The composer struggled for years with this material (the work is his opus 68) before pulling things together. Some of that titanic wrestling is apparent, but far more obvious is that he had finally gotten things right. Groner and orchestra gave us an authentic reading, ripe in sound and flowing with majestic authority. To hear such dedicated playing from an orchestra whose two-week schedule had been so arduous was heartening. After the “Star-Spangled Banner,” the audience went home, happy and more than a little amazed. (Erik Eriksson)