Albany Symphony echoes warmth of incoming spring
TROY — As spring teases its early arrival, the Albany Symphony presented a program with a ticklish theme of nature and the elements.
Vivaldi does a pretty great job addressing that same agenda all on his own with “The Four Seasons,” which received a fine performance after intermission. For the concert’s first half, music director David Alan Miller made inspired choices with recent works by two returning composers.
As a representation of the flight patterns of starlings, Derek Bermel’s “Murmurations” is all about air, space and achieving liftoff. Written for string orchestra, it begins with extended trills and sudden darting upward lines. In the central movement the music moves in waves as seen at a distance, from sea to shining sea. Warm harmonies in the finale evoked the forces of a higher plane that guide the flock. To quote a line from the next piece, it was about “some other order of things.”
Reena Esmail’s “The History of Red” brought us back down to earth and digging deep into the dark soil. Soprano Molly Netter sang with incredible focus and beauty for Esmail’s setting of a poem by Linda Hogan, rich in feminine insight and metaphors of human conflict, procreation and survival over millennia. With vivid and flattering orchestral writing, it was the best piece yet from Esmail, an ASO regular. Like a Martha Graham ballet, it was about the womb, the wisdom and the pulse of women.
In a small break from convention, there was more than one soloist in “The Four Seasons.” Instead Miller engaged four recent alumni of Juilliard’s early music graduate program, one for each season. They brought a unique sound and performance style to each of the independent works.
Many of the ASO string players were using antique or antique style bows, also on loan from Juilliard, though it was hard to detect much difference in sound. The piece has its crisp light character built in and the players handled it with aplomb.
Audiences are coming back. The house looked full and overheard comments indicated newcomers were in the fold. Miller had the audience in stiches when he talked about early music practices. It was hard to leave this concert not in good mood.