Orchestra passionately performs ‘Pathetique’

The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra and conductor Philip Mann did a fine job of conveying “Tchaikovsky’s Passion,” via his Symphony

No. 6, “Pathetique,” Saturday night at Little Rock’s Robinson Center Performance Hall.

After a slightly bumpy start — some gaffed notes and minor synchronization issues — the musicians brought out all the drama and the full depth of emotion in the composer’s final work. And Mann, intense on the podium, helped them extract every last drop of the outright pathos that gives the work its title. Also particularly noteworthy were the second-movement waltz (in an awkward 5/4 time signature — try dancing to that) and the boisterous third movement, starting as an antic scherzo and building to a march of near-epic proportions. (Audiences often applaud when it’s over. This one did.)

The first half of the program focused on Spanish passions, through an excellent performance by pianist Tatiana Roitman Mann of Manuel de Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain and six selections cherry-picked from the two orchestral suites from Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen. The conductor put the strings into a more European configuration, with the second violins outside on his right and the violas in the space they normally occupy.

Mann, Mann and the orchestra will repeat the program at 3 p.m. today at Robinson, West Markham Street and Broadway, Little Rock. With metal detectors at hall entrances and security staff hand-searching bags, it’d be a good idea to arrive a little earlier than you usually would. Call (501) 666-1761, Extension 100, or visit the website, ArkansasSymphony.org, for ticket information and a list of items that can no longer be taken into the building.