UTAH VALLEY SYMPHONY, Covey Center, Provo, March 1
After the advent of Bugs Bunny, it’s hard to listen to Gioachino Rossini’s Barber of Seville overture with a straight face. Even without imagining Elmer Fudd’s close shave, I went to a concert a few weeks ago where the choir did a hilarious a cappella version of the overture.
Utah Valley Symphony music director Bryce Rytting seemed to be enjoying himself throughout the piece at Thursday’s performance. At one point, he was noticeably kicking his heels.
The orchestra obviously had fun with this piece, but there were a few passages and trills where they got away from themselves. Still, their enthusiasm and the momentum of the work itself more than made up for any shortcomings.
Next they played Pietro Mascagni’s immensely lyrical “Intermezzo” from Cavalleria Rusticana. The strings took this moment to shine and made the whole section sound like a single instrument.
The first half of the program concluded with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien. The brass had some intonation issues throughout the piece, and the strings could have been a little more polished. The piece is structured around the silences, which are punctuated by various capricious themes. Because of the disjointed nature of the piece, the entrance and exits of the different themes need to be really clean. Although the orchestra played with gusto, they could have had cleaner transitions.
After intermission, guest soloist Alexander Woods came onstage to perform the “Winter” and “Spring” concertos from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. These pieces are so well known that it’s difficult for performers to make them their own without doing something drastic. But Woods managed to fuse himself with the music with extraordinary grace.
This portion of the concert was quite casual. All the orchestra left the stage except for about half of the strings, and so they were able to achieve a level of intimacy which had been impossible only 10 minutes before. Woods physically moved in and out of the violins’ section, emphasizing the dialogic nature of these pieces.
He played on a Baroque violin and bow and used authentic gut strings. Somewhere in the third movement of the “Winter” concerto, one of Shakespeare’s lines came into my mind: “Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies?” I don’t know if it was the sheep gut necessarily, but I did find this familiar piece particularly moving. I’m sure it had something to do with the season being poised at the edge of winter and the beginning of spring. But Woods also played with an inescapable eloquence, fully capitalizing on every stroke of his bow.
At this point, I wanted the concert to end. I didn’t think that the orchestra could outshine these two brilliant pieces, and I figured we might as well end on a strong note.
But then they performed The Pines of Rome by Ottorino Respighi. Suddenly, it seemed like there was an entirely different group of musicians in the orchestra. They performed this work so expertly that I couldn’t believe it was the same orchestra from the first half of the concert.
The assorted soloists in the orchestra were particularly astounding, most notably the clarinetist, Michael Sausedo. His solos in the third movement were shockingly beautiful.
Respighi gives the orchestra some surprising sonorities, and the Utah Valley Symphony took full advantage of them, creating rich and luscious fields of sound. From the haunting soundscapes of the Roman catacombs to the thunder of troops marching triumphantly home, the orchestra supplied us with beautiful and convincing musical imagery.