Andrés Orozco-Estrada makes electrifying return to Houston Symphony
As familiar as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony has become — or at least its opening four notes — its power remains intact. Those four notes only last a few seconds, but they signal drama, turmoil and powerful forces afoot. They also leave nearly 40 minutes to go in the piece, which only gets more exciting from there.
Under the circumstances, such a consequential work was tailor-made for Houston Symphony music director Andrés Orozco-Estrada’s return to Jones Hall. Under his baton this weekend, for the first time since February 2020, the orchestra played with urgency and electricity. The moment did carry a bittersweet edge, however — his final season in Houston is now officially underway.
Orozco-Estrada’s kinetic energy on the podium was a welcome sight indeed, but the first half of Saturday’s concert highlighted two of his less heralded talents: programming more obscure repertoire that spotlights the orchestra’s top players; and the caliber of visiting soloists he draws to Houston. Here, it was concertmaster Yoonshin Song, principal cellist Brinton Averil Smith and guest pianist Yefim Bronfman teaming up on Beethoven’s Concerto for Piano, Violin and Cello in C Major, a rarely performed jewel first published in 1804.
The piece brimmed with Smith’s swooping cello lines, Song’s feverish virtuosity and Bronfman’s keyboard cloudbursts — any one of which would have been more than enough to carry most concertos. Most compelling was the interplay between the three, the way one might pick up and expand a line one of their counterparts was still playing, before inverting and contorting it and tossing it back. In a setting that could have easily gone the other way, the trio created a feeling of true collaboration, not competition.
During intermission, the screens in Jones Hall showed a link to an 11-minute documentary the symphony’s AV squad made in honor of Orozco-Estrada’s return and the Fifth. Besides recapping the various ways that opening cadence has infiltrated pop culture over the years — everything from Walter Murphy’s disco relic “A Fifth of Beethoven” to “The Breakfast Club” and “The Simpsons” — a handful of orchestra members and Orozco-Estrada reflected on the emotions the Fifth evokes and why it made a perfect fit for his return.
“I wanted to begin my last season as music director with a celebratory moment for us all to connect after the last turbulent year,” he said.
He chose a turbulent piece. From the down beat on, OrozcoEstrada attacked the score, pushing the orchestra at a faster tempo than many interpretations and sharpening the contrast between the passages of sweetness and eruptions of raw energy. At times it was almost violent. Late in the first movement, the storm let up long enough for a few bars of forlorn solo oboe, perhaps illuminating humanity’s ultimate insignificance in the vast cosmos.
Or perhaps not. In the documentary, Orozco-Estrada noted how NASA included the Fifth on the Voyager probe’s “golden record,” meant to introduce humankind — positively — to any extraterrestrial entities it encountered. Beginning with the cellos, the second movement gradually unfurled one of Beethoven’s most serene melodies; a second theme, closer to a march, struck a noble and graceful tone.
The fateful rhythm from the opening movement returned in the third, a mysterious and fast-paced scherzo that amounted to an extended transition to the finale, a relentless gallop that overflowed with triumph and jubilation. Jumping in the air, stabbing and waving his baton, Orozco-Estrada made an exuberant conduit. (Before heading back to Vienna, he might well have stopped by a chiropractor first.)
The ensuing ovation, from all three tiers of Jones Hall, was one of the longest and loudest in recent memory, the atmosphere charged with a vibe of having witnessed something truly special. The clock may be ticking on Orozco-Estrada’s curtain call, but his Fifth held out the promise of plenty more thrills to come.