TSO serves up pictures, Pine and a little basketball therapy
TSO serves up pictures, Pine and a little basketball therapy
BY CATHALENA E. BURCH
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
MARCH 17, 2018
Tucson Symphony Orchestra on Friday night offered the perfect antidote for Tucson's NCAA hangover: A musical stroll through an exhibition.
What better way to forget Thursday's UA Wildcats' ugly early exit from the tournament than immersing ourselves in beautiful music.
And Modest Mussorgsky's "Pictures At An Exhibition" featuring a series of brilliant animation and illustrations shown on a giant screen above the stage, is arguably one of the most beautiful works ever composed.
Under the baton of Brazilian-born guest conductor Marcelo Lehninger, the orchestra performed the 10-scene piece with glorious gestures from the terrific horns and winds, rumbling thunder from the percussions and sweeping majesty from the strings that helped us forget, even if it was for just 35 minutes.
The illustrations by a USC team led by Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger included a menacing gnome, a journey through dark catacombs, a sepia-toned scene of people strolling through a gallery and colorful newly-hatched chicks dancing once they are freed from their shells. The images allowed us to visualize the music perhaps not exactly as the 19th century composer had intended, but in a way that made the solitary trumpet opening of Mussorgsky's familiar and beloved Promenade resonate with renewed spirit.
The animation also prompted some among the 1,500 people in Friday's Tucson Music Hall audience to giggle. Cartoons have that effect on you, no matter your age or where you are when you see them.
"Pictures" anchored the TSO program, but it was far from the only highlight.
The concert opened with Dmitri Kabalevsky's Overture to his 1938 opera "Colas Breugnon," which the TSO had performed just once before, in 1967. The work opens with a crush of percussion from a half-dozen TSO players banging drums and a timpani, playing marimba and xylophone and crashing cymbals. Lehninger performed the five-minute work with a dynamic energy and dramatic expression.
In the middle of the program, celebrated violinist Rachel Barton Pine, in her first TSO appearance since 2002, reintroduced herself with Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra and reminded us what we had been missing in her 16-year absence.
The Khachaturian is a beast of a virtuosic piece that demands tonal precision to create the bridges that connect its emotional rollercoaster. It goes from exuberant and joyful to anxious verging on angry, and then quiets to a gorgeous, melodic stroll. And it's flavored with Armenian folk tunes and Eastern rhythms, which Pine expressed so finely that you could hear the native accents. Her fingers looked like they were doing aerobics as she scaled through crazy fast note changes and drew the bow in an equal frenzy that sounded far more purposeful than the pace would have you believe. And at every turn, she brought out a palette of rich colors to fit every mood, from warm and comforting to bold and brash.
Amid a full-throttled standing ovation after her performance, Pine played a trio of challenging Scottish dance pieces to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.
In the lobby during intermission, Pine signed CDs and chatted with fans. When one commented that Pine just couldn't take the easy route, even with her encore, she smiled.
"Well that wouldn't be any fun," she said.
By the time the TSO concert let out Friday night, many in the audience had put that brutal UA NCAA tournament loss out of our heads. And then we learned that while we were reveling in "Pictures" and Pine, the 16 seed University of Maryland, Baltimore County had clobbered No. 1 seed Virginia by 20 points in an historic loss; it was the first time in the tournament's history that a No. 16 seed beat a No. 1 seed.
That kinda put Arizona's loss in a whole different light.
