By DAVID HALL
Special to THE ELLSWORTH AMERICAN
ORONO — Sunday afternoon, the
Maine Center for the Arts was the
scene for a program of contemporary and near-contemporary
American music performed by the
Bangor Symphony Orchestra
under the direction of Michael
Jinbo. The music director of the
famous Pierre Monteux School for
conductors at Hancock, Jinbo is
second of the five aspirants for the
post of musical director of the
Bangor orchestra.
Joining maestro Jinbo and the
symphony for the first half of the
program was tall, dark and handsome piano soloist, Jeffrey Biegel,
who participated in the Maine premiere of "Millennium Fantasy" by
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich along with a
singular version of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." Mr.
Jinbo had the orchestra to himself
following intermission with Aaron
Copland's "Appalachian Spring"
and Three Dance Episodes from
Leonard Bernstein's musical "On
the Town." "Millennium Fantasy"
composer Zwilich was the first of
her gender to be awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for Music back in
1983. Since then she has taken her
place among the foremost of a substantial phalanx of American
women composers who have
graced the creative musical scene
over the past generation.
Her "Millennium Fantasy" is in
two movements, the first being of a
contemplative preludial nature
with emphatic interjections from
the piano soloist. The second is
longer and more active with plenty
of virtuosic action from the keyboard along with a lovely pastoral
interlude. The whole is based on a
folksong that Zwilich remembers
from her grandmother called "Fair
and Tender Ladies." To these ears
it sounded suspiciously close to
"Poor Wayfaring Strange" but at
all events it made a lovely underpinning for the work as a whole in
its cleverly varied transformations
and glistening orchestral garb. It
was interesting to note that instead
of the usual timpani in the percussion department, Zwilich has
made subtle use of a jazz drum
set, along with quietly effective use
of rolled cymbals. The music as a
whole is firmly in the honorable
American symphonic tradition represented by the likes of Aaron Copland, Morton Gould and William
Schuman.
The score was commissioned for
Jeffrey Biegel by a consortium of
some twenty-seven American orchestras and had its first performance in September 2000 with the
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
The singularity of Biegel's reading
of the familiar Gershwin "Rhapsody in Blue" stemmed from his
use of a fully restored version of
the original score, which he had
premiered in 1997. Some fifty additional bars of solo piano material
found their way into the Bangor
performance, which
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added substantially to the scope and shape of
the work as a whole. Biegel's performance was beautifully nuanced
in both rubato elements and dynamics, and in general removed
from the usual blockbuster approach. He and the orchestra (a
ragged opening clarinet glissando
notwithstanding) received rousing
applause from the near-capacity
audience. Aaron Copland's 1944
dance masterpiece for Martha
Graham — "Appalachian Spring" — occupied most of the program's
second half. Here we have magical
writing for strings and woodwinds
evocative of mountainous rural
landscape, sharply contrasted with
athletic Stravinskian rhythmic gesture, the whole being matched, if
not transcended; by the famous
Shaker hymn variations on "Simple Gifts." The piece is devilishly
demanding in its demand for clarity of line and precise rhythms.
Copland's lean and glistening orchestral texture leaves no margin
for error.
Mr. Jinbo, poised and forthright,
guided the players through the
treacherous shoals and rapids of
the piece, though the going got a
bit dicey in the frenetic running
staccato string figures associated
with the Bride's solo dance. The
upbeat nature of the program as a
whole was emphasized in the closing sequence of Three Dance
Episodes from "On the Town,"
Leonard Bernstein's hugely successful 1944 musical, with its sailor
protagonists and their encounter
with New York's Miss Turnstiles.
Regrettably, the printed program
failed to mention the titles of the
Three Dance Episodes ("The
Great Lover," "Lonely Town,"
"Times Square"), but Mr. Jinbo
saved the day with delightful elucidation from the podium, including
his recollections of the famous
MGM film version with Gene
Kelly.
The Bangor players really cut
loose in the razzmatazz of the first
number, caught nicely the
poignant bluesiness of the second
and gave their all in the closing
"Times Square" with its fantasy on
the "New York, New York" theme
song. Hefty applause was the result, and Jinbo interrupted gracefully to express his pleasure in
coming to know Bangor and its orchestra and to urge the utmost in
community support.
Clearly the audience at the
Maine Center for the Arts got immense enjoyment from this all American program and its spirited presentation. There is no
doubt that Maestro Jinbo knows
his stuff when it comes to 20th
century musical fare. Should he
get the nod for the next Bangor
Symphony conductorship, it remains to be seen (or heard) how
he does with Mozart, Beethoven
and Brahms.
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