Night of Prayer and Organ Spectacular at Pacific Symphony
/By Truman C. Wang
3/10/2022
Conductor Edo de Waart (L), Violinist James Ehnes (R)
On March 10 Thursday evening, with the war in Ukraine still raging on and no sign of peace on the horizon, the arriving patrons were greeted with the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag. The concert began with a speech by John Evans, chairman of the Pacific Symphony board, and the strings of the orchestra playing "Prayer for Ukraine" as a tribute to the war victims –a deeply spiritual and heartfelt Ukrainian version of Adagio for Strings.
The first work on the program was Nocturne for Orchestra by Michael Ippolito (b.1985), whose inspiration came from the painting “Nocturne” of Spanish surrealist Joan Miró. It’s a rather somber work of nocturnal mood, intrrupted by a nightmarish climax, and ending with a few broken strains from Chopin’s E-flat Nocturne – perhaps a musical depiction of wartime PTSD?
Violinist James Ehnes
Fittingly, almost serendipitously, the composer of the next work, Sergei Prokofiev, was born and raised in Ukraine. Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 begins with a dark, foreboding melody in odd 5/4 time that is followed by a romantic motif recalling the balcony scene from the ballet Romeo and Juliet (written in the same year!) Violinist James Ehnes produced sweetly radiant tones from his “Marsick” Stradivarius of 1715 and gave an eloquent reading, balancing pungent lyricism with rhythmic robustness. The sensuous melody in the slow movement, a continuation of the Romeo and Juliet theme, could use more legato and vibrato in the old Russian style, but it was genuinely heartfelt nonetheless. Conductor Edo de Waart got some impressively sharp and colorful playing from the Pacific Symphony musicians, particulary the brass and winds, and achieved a fine rapport between the orchestra and the soloist.
Unlike Widor’s organ symphonies, Saint-Saëns never meant to write an organ showpiece but a ‘symphony with organ’. Perfect for the task at hand, the Segerstrom Concert Hall's pipe organ is capable of massive sonorities as well as reedy, delicate tones for Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony. Maestro De Waart provided the excitement, delicacy, grandeur and radiance where they were required. Also impressive were the symphony’s quieter passages – the lovely, ethereal sounds of the organ and pizzicato strings in the poco adagio came off like sunlight filtered through stained glass; or in the finale the exquisite texture of divided strings with piano four-hands playing arpeggiated chords (often missed by the listener). Organist Christoph Bull balanced clarity and atmosphere while capturing the full power of the organ in all its glorious, floor-rumbling magnificence.
Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.