ASO players thrill in unusual combos

Three flutists, four trombonists and four string players took the stage — not all at the same time — for the Arkansas Symphony’s final 2017-18 River Rhapsodies chamber concert Tuesday night at Little Rock’s Clinton Presidential Center.

The “Beethoven Festival” program was thematically linked to this past weekend’s “Beethoven & Blue Jeans” Masterworks concerts, centering on the second of Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Razumovsky” quartets.

The orchestra’s Rockefeller String Quartet — Trisha McGovern Freeney and Katherine Williamson, violins (with Williamson sitting first chair); Katherine Reynolds, viola; and Ethan Young, cello — gave a very fine performance of the String Quartet No. 8 in e minor, op. 59 No. 2, with considerable attention to dynamics and tempos.

After providing a gorgeous reading of the slow, sentimental second movement, the players picked up steam for the (literally) offbeat scherzo and the “Presto” finale.

The quartet also opened the show with “Slo-Mo,” the second movement of the Motio quartet by ASO composer of the year Adam Schoenberg, making the most of Schoenberg’s easily accessible harmonies and measured chord changes.

The ASO’s flute section — Carolyn Brown, Diane McVinney and Gabriel Vega — delighted the audience with the G-major Trio for Three Flutes, composer unknown but attributed to Beethoven; Vega, who usually is more often heard playing piccolo than flute in the orchestra concerts, took the lead.

A wineglass tapped by a member of the audience during the second movement produced a loud note that was almost in the right key.

And 20th-century Polish composer Kazimierz Serocki’s Suite for Four Trombones featured the orchestra’s trombone section — Michael Underwood, Bruce Faske, Sean Reed and David Carter — producing sounds that were certainly lively, unconventionally tonal and certainly not often heard in traditional chamber-music performances.