‘A concert every 20 minutes’ excels
“A concert every 20 minutes” is how conductor David Alan Miller in a candid moment described the pace of the weekend.
The Albany Symphony’s annual American Music Festival did feel jam-packed with events, and the bulk of it was on Miller’s shoulders. But he still managed to marshal his sizable forces to deliver a bold and invigorating program Saturday night at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.
John Corigliano’s “Triathlon” with saxophone soloist Timothy Mcallister was the finale and a knock-out success. Each of the three movements features the soloist on a different sax — soprano, alto and baritone. The breadth of their melodic and expressive ranges gets stretched to extremes that were by turns daring, impolite and alarming.
Nothing prepared the ears for the clangorous squawks coming from both soloist and orchestra in the opening, titled “Leaps.” In the second movement “Lines,” the writing was more gracious and Mcallister played with a sound that was pungent with a hint of vibrato, all against a noble orchestral palette.
In the closer, “Licks,” there were harsh tongue slaps from the soloist that were answered by some teasing sounds from the orchestra. It was a commanding performance with the composer on hand to share in the ovation.
The American premiere of
John Williams’ Prelude and Scherzo for piano and orchestra was kind of anticlimactic, partly for its brevity, and also its understated tone. Gloria Cheng had the atonal keyboard writing well in hand, but the part still felt austere and a bit under exploited by Williams. The lyric Prelude was brand new, written at the behest of Miller and Cheng, but we were left to guess when exactly it segued into the more propulsive Scherzo.
The evening opened with Gabriella Smith’s “Field Guide,” a sequence of sighing, sawing and trilling meant to evoke choruses of birds at first light. While the effect was initially rather machine-like, there came a point when the hall seemed to fill with an aura of sound like a forest cathedral.
In a sense, Steven Stucky’s “Radical Light” occupied the same energetic space though in a more elegant and radiant manner. The late composer’s score somehow negotiates a seamless journey through prisms of color, concluding with the brass choir in the warmth of victory.