We attended the second installment of NMSO’s Classics series last night. It headlined a performance of Beethoven’s Seventh, but also included pieces for the individual sections by Ernesto Cordero and Richard Strauss. The concert opened with the strings playing Cordero’s “Insula Tropical,” with Maestro Figueroa himself playing solo violin. “Insula Tropical” was a four-movement piece based on Caribbean rhythms. It was built out of movements from two shorter works, one of which had been composed specifically for Figueroa. I always am gratified to hear newer pieces at the symphony hall, but “Insula Tropical” left me surprisingly cold. With the exception of the second movement, there were very few melodies to catch the ear. If Cordero had been able to use the Caribbean rhythms underpinning the piece effectively and with more variation, this could have compensated for the lack of melody and drawn the piece more in line with Stravinsky ballet, but the dance rhythms were played straight and sounded more like an ostinato than a dance. The harmonic structure was as simple as pop music, and the violin solos as written were little more than arpeggios and runs, and sounded like student etudes. The whole thing reminded me of old exotica records by Henry Mancini and Esquivel, and I felt the piece as a whole would have been better served in a pops concert. The members of the string section clearly felt the banality of the piece, and their playing was staid and unemotional. That Maestro Figueroa’s violin was a little out of tune did not help sell me on the work, either.
Richard Strauss came to the rescue with his “Serenade in E Flat Major for Winds” and his “Solemn Entrance of the Knights of the Johanniter-Ordens” for brass. The “Serenade” was one of the first pieces he composed, and while it was obvious that he had not developed his expansive orchestral skills that he would later deploy in “Don Juan” or “Till Eulenspiegel,” he still made great use of the varied colors of the different members of the wind family. With the horns providing a mellow harmonic base to build on, I was amazed how much the competing characteristic sounds of the flutes, oboes, and clarinets could evoke the sound of the entire orchestra. The wind section tackled the “Serenade” with relish, and it was easily the best technical performance of the first half.
NMSO’s brass section finished the first half of the concert with the “Solemn Entrance” mentioned above. This piece was sweeping and majestic in scope, and built great towering chords one note at a time across the overtone series much like his earlier “Also sprach Zarathustra.” Coupled with the purity of tone that brass can achieve, this style of writing caused Popejoy hall to ring like the opening gates of heaven, and the piece was absolutely thrilling to listen to. NMSO’s brass section played with great energy, and this almost hid their customary lack of technical precision. As is customary with the section, there were plenty of entrances missed and notes hunted for. Still, I always prefer an energetic, if scrappy, performance to one that is precise and dull, and I enjoyed their performance immensely.
After the intermission, Maestro Figueroa wasted no time in whipping the orchestra into a frenzy for Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Now that they had something challenging under their fingers, the string section played with great emotion, most notably in their heartbreaking rendition of the stately and melancholy second movement of the work. The orchestra went on to hit every emotional high and low of the piece, and was greeted with the fastest standing ovation I have seen at Popejoy. This symphony is a masterpiece, and it was masterfully led under Figueroa’s baton.
A few months ago, Project Mooncircle released Finest Ego: Japanese Beatmaker Compilation as a freebie download. (It’s still available, but now it costs.) It contained around a dozen different hip-hop instrumentals from different Japanese DJs, and made for such a terrific uptempo ambience that it wound up in my stereo every time I entertained this fall. Well, Project Mooncircle has just put another volume in their Finest Ego library, with the new Russian Beatmaker Compilation. This volume is built more on synth than sample, but it’s still danceable (if Stravinskian), and it’s still free. At least for a few more days.
