Mozart and Orff:
soloists, Elizabeth Stoyanovich, cond., Bremerton
Symphony Orchestra and Concert Chorale, Chora Voce,
Tahoma Girls’ and Boys’ Choir, Bremerton
Performing Arts Center, Bremerton, WA, 7.5.2006 (BJ)
It has always been my conviction that musical life
is a pyramid (no–life isn’t a fountain!),
and that a healthy level of activity at the top is
in large degree dependent on a healthy base. Hence
this review of a performance by the local amateur
orchestra, in a largely blue-collar town–its
economy founded on a shipyard and a naval base–of
something under 40,000 inhabitants, just across Puget
Sound from the much larger and more celebrated city
of Seattle.
Despite my pyramid theory, I went to this concert
without high expectations. How was an amateur ensemble,
even one with a 63-year history to its name, going
to cope with that most difficult of composers, Mozart?
How was I, for that matter, going to cope with yet
another performance of Carmina Burana, which
is, to understate the case considerably, not one of
my favorite works? What sort of audience could the
orchestra hope to draw? And what sort of hall could
such a city have to offer on its high-school campus?
Well, I should have had more faith. The afternoon
was a triumph. Elizabeth Stoyanovich, music director
here since 2003, is an extremely good conductor. Her
orchestra, having navigated Mozart’s great Sinfonia
Concertante for violin and viola with aplomb,
went on to tackle Orff’s bigger, splashier score
with a confidence and an address that would have done
many a professional orchestra proud. There was hardly
a ghost of a fluff in even the most exposed solos,
and the ensemble sound was at once rich and lucid,
aided by the acoustics of a 1,200-seat hall of entirely
professional standard, which moreover was about three-quarters
full.
The soloists in the Orff acquitted themselves on the
same high level. The soprano, Jessica Robins Milanese,
sounded a tad acid of tone in her first few notes,
but she quickly warmed to her work, and her final
lascivious surrender, to the words “Dulcissime,
totam tibi subdo me,” was meltingly lovely.
Barry Johnson, who had the most of the three to do,
delivered the baritone solos with authority and zest,
and Paul Karaitis endowed the tenor’s roasted-swan-song
with just the right touch of subversive wit. The assembled
choruses were warm and well focused in tone, crisp
in attack, and admirably clear in diction. I actually
found myself thoroughly enjoying Orff’s hoary
old chestnut, whose best qualities, notably its underlying
innocence of inspiration, took welcome precedence
on this occasion over its occasional sleaziness and
crudity. Before intermission, in the Mozart, violinist
Stephen Bryant, worthily partnered on the viola by
Gwen Franz, completed a notable weekend double–he
played just as splendidly here as he had the evening
before in the Seattle Symphony’s Made in America
Festival (reviewed elsewhere in these columns).
Even Ryan Raul Bañagale’s program notes
(and I’m always complaining about the quality
of program notes) were thoughtful and informative.
But in any such enterprise as this, the chief credit
for getting everything to work must go to the conductor.
Ms. Stoyanovich does her work on the podium with economy
of effort and grace of conception and execution. She
has authority, elegance, technique, and taste–all
the more surprising, therefore, that she completely
missed the dynamic contrast in the first two measures
of the Mozart, which asks for a tigerish sforzando-piano
on the first two chords answered by a solid forte
on the third. It didn’t, I thought, bode well.
But that turned out to be my only complaint over the
whole richly rewarding afternoon. Congratulations
to all concerned. The pyramid is looking healthy indeed.
Bernard Jacobson
