2 double violin works are double pleasure

Fans of double violin concertos got at least double the pleasure Thursday night at the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra’s final 2016- 17 Intimate Neighborhood Concert at Calvary Baptist Church in Little Rock’s Pulaski Heights.

Co- concertmasters Kiril Laskarov and Andrew Irvin shone in two concertos for two violins — the famous one by J. S. Bach, in d minor, and the world premiere of the Double Concerto by Michael Fine.

The performances of both pieces integrated soloists with 13 backing string players to create more of a concerto grosso feel ( multiple soloists playing at times in front of, and at times as part of, the ensemble). Fine’s work, having the benefit of the Bach work for inspiration, was more by design.

Conductor Philip Mann took the first and third movements of the Bach concerto at particularly quick clips, with the two violinists, if they hadn’t been in white tie and tails, resembling at times busy fiddlers at a square dance. The slow second movement, among the most sublime few minutes of music ever written, were a marked and gorgeous contrast.

Fine’s three- movement work, meanwhile, enhances the voicing in the same string “band” ( minus the harpsichord) to create a lovely flow of melody and harmony throughout, full of warm, rich tonal colors and a really nice mini- cadenza at the finale. Like his Suite for Strings, which the orchestra premiered at an INC concert in January 2016, the musical line flows across movement boundaries.

The other half of the concert was a fine performance of the original chamber version ( with enhanced strings) of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite, the same 13- voice orchestra that was part of the premiere of Martha Graham’s 1944 ballet of that name. One hears in this version the spareness and clarity of the musical ideas usually lost amid the grandeur of the edition for full orchestra.