What's so bad about being popular?
In the mysterious credibility hierarchy that somehow attaches itself to the orchestral realm, there's one wide, approachable swath of the repertoire that has acquired the reputation of being lower in quality or artistically less worthy than others. Except with audiences, who are smart enough to gravitate toward a good tune when they hear it.
In the mysterious credibility hierarchy that somehow attaches itself to the orchestral realm, there's one wide, approachable swath of the repertoire that has acquired the reputation of being lower in quality or artistically less worthy than others. Except with audiences, who are smart enough to gravitate toward a good tune when they hear it.
The Philadelphia Orchestra this week rolled out a good sampling of this most popular slice of the canon on three successive nights. The first night was Czech, the second Russian. Thursday was all-American, with some of the usual suspects, but also more interestingly curated works.
This year's "Best Of" format is the successor idea to last year's somewhat incoherent single-movement explorations of Mozart, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, and, before that, the Mozart festival with Pamela Frank and Peter Oundjian that once occupied this part of the June calendar in Verizon Hall.
While this year's programming might have looked on paper more discursive than those of previous years, the burst of Americana actually held together fairly well. There wasn't exactly a conversation going on, compositionally speaking, between Sousa and Gershwin or Bernstein and Ives. It was more of a sampling, and when the quality of the repertoire is as high as it was, that in itself emerges as justification enough.
Quality of performance matters, too. Rossen Milanov was once again on the podium for the mini-fest. Milanov, the orchestra's associate conductor, is extremely busy. He's leading the orchestra's free neighborhood concerts, tonight's run-out to Longwood Gardens, much of the forthcoming Mann season - including a nipped and tucked
La Bohème
- and a couple of concerts in Vail, Colo. Is he doing too much? You can count on him for energy. He's visually athletic, absolutely professional, and lets the orchestra's innate expressiveness flourish. But his interpretive ideas these days seem rather limited.
He's also a charming and (at least on this night) illuminating speaker. Taking a page from the orchestra's Access concerts, Milanov spoke about each piece before conducting it, sometimes drawing musical illustrations from the players. The audience - which included platinum blondes in Lilly Pulitzer prints and their dates in flip-flops, as well as a young woman next to me who made sport of pointing out players by name - ate it up.
As a tool for honing attention, the strategy works. Barely a sound escaped from listeners even during the most quietly meditative works: Ives'
The Unanswered Question
with trumpeter Jeffrey Curnow as soloist, and Piston's
Fantasy for English Horn, Harp and Strings
with two ideal soloists, English hornist Elizabeth Starr Masoudnia and harpist Elizabeth Hainen.
Gershwin's
Porgy and Bess
, in the "symphonic picture" package orchestrated by Robert Russell Bennett, was just the perfect summertime vehicle for this orchestra's full-bodied sound. Copland's
Appalachian Spring
awaits a more penetrating reading.
A "postlude" encore was delivered by a six-member ensemble calling itself the Philorch New Grass. The group's membership changes, centering on a nucleus of percussionist Don S. Liuzzi and the De Pue brothers, two of whom have been members of the orchestra's violin section.
Like Time for Three, which grew (at least tangentially) from the orchestra, this collective is basically bluegrass. Also like Time for Three, motion and energy are its most compelling qualities. Whether or not it's your cup of tea, that's Americana, too.