I am medically advised to be cautious about attending crowded public events, including Richmond Symphony concerts. The orchestra is making video streams of its Symphony Series performances available to ticket-holders. The stream of this program was posted on Jan. 25.
Valentina Peleggi conducting
with Francesca Dego, violin
Jan. 20-21, Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center
Is Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 2 in D major the best of his four symphonies? In many ways, it’s the most characteristic of Brahms writ large: Wistfully moody tunes; duskily lyrical string writing; intricately voiced, madrigal-like wind choirs; punchy, rhythmically punctuating brass. Its melodies bloom expressively, but its accents are sharp and emphatic. The piece is tightly constructed, but seems to flow like a stream of consciousness.
Music Director Valentina Peleggi and the symphony realized all those qualities in a performance of the Brahms in the latest of the orchestra’s mainstage programs.
The ensemble maintained the essential pulse that underlies Brahms’ music; but the pulse-sustainers, the strings, favored focused sonority over lushness. In this tonescape, winds were more prominently audible. Peleggi’s moderate tempos left space for expansive lyricism from massed strings and solo winds, as well as details of articulation and voicing. It was chamber music on a symphonic scale.
The Brahms capped a program otherwise devoted to new and rarely heard music: the premiere of “Sinfonia Americana” by Damien Geter, composer-in-residence with the symphony and Virginia Opera; and violinist Francesca Dego playing Ferrucio Busoni’s Violin Concerto in D major and, in an encore, the “Polish Caprice” of Grażyna Bacewicz.
Busoni (1866-1924), an Italian who spent most of his career in Germany, is best-known as a piano virtuoso and teacher; his most widely performed work is a piano transcription of the Chaconne from J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004. His Violin Concerto, introduced in 1897, is a showcase for the instrument, seeming at times to harken back to Paganini in its effusions of fiddle filagree; but it’s also an inversion of the standard romantic dialogue between soloist and orchestra, especially in a big and (for its time) adventurous opening movement.
That opens with what amounts to a cadenza for the violin, a signal that the instrument will mostly respond to and elaborate on, rather than project, the movement’s themes – effectively making the soloist the orchestra’s accompanist. Some of that same role reversal can be heard in the concerto’s finale, a kind of amalgamation of Central European dance rhythms. A more conventionally structured and voiced central slow movement gives the violin its more familiar concerto role as a protagonist with a beautiful singing voice, in the work’s only really memorable tune.
Dego, who is known for reviving rarely heard repertory alongside playing the usual standards, played the contrasting characters that Busoni gives the violin with sensitivity, flair, a tone that glistened even in the crunchiest double-stopping, and a keen ear for collaboration with the orchestra. Her treatment of the bursts of good-humored extroversion in the concerto’s more animated moments was even more evident in the Bacewicz encore.
Geter’s “Sinfonia Americana,” a work lasting about 15 minutes, is an inversion of usual custom in its slow-fast-slow progression of movements. The composer presents the piece as a question: “What is the American sound?” His answer contrasts a quizzically lyrical, recurring main theme, sounding open-air but not big-sky, with a brightly brassy, rhythmically turbulent central section. Conspicuous by their absence, or deep sublimation, are the kind of folk-flavored or anthemic themes commonly associated with the term “Americana.”
Peleggi and the orchestra introduced Geter’s sinfonia with an attentive, expressive performance.
The stream of this program remains accessible until June 30. Access: $30. Details: (800) 514-3849 (ETIX); http://richmondsymphony.com
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