Poignant tales of grief resonate with audience

To coin a phrase, grief takes many forms.

The musical works — by contemporary British composer Anna Clyne, Shostakovich and Beethoven — on the program of Saturday night’s concert of the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra and British cellist Natalie Clein gave voice to the loss of a parent, the loss of humanity under a murderous political regime and the disillusionment over a hero’s fall from grace.

Under the direction of ProMusica music director David Danzmayr, the orchestra soared through the darkness and into the light of triumph at Worthington United Methodist Church.

ProMusica’s strings whispered the opening motive of Clyne’s “Within Her Arms” in elegiac tones. Dedicated to Clyne’s late mother, “Within Her Arms” inhabits a thicket of plaintive dissonances that From the opening chords of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 “Eroica,” from which the composer famously stripped his earlier dedication to Napoleon, the orchestra’s performance of the first movement was a study in elegance of sound. Danzmayr’s lilting tempo allowed for both graceful fluidity and fiery passion.

arrive now and then at clearings of lush, nostalgia-tinged tonality. Danzmayr led the strings through a well-paced interpretation of these shadows and flickers of light, of grief unresolved and the occasional glimmer of hope.

Cello soloist Natalie Clein bit intensely into the brittle opening of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and barreled head-first through passages of relentless multiple stops and the obsessive permutations of the work’s head motive.

Clein played the elegiac melodies of the second movement, “Moderato,” with dignified expression. ProMusica’s strings gave poignant voice to a

lament-like passage midway through the movement.

In Clein’s hands, the third movement cadenza became the expression of a soul groping through the shadows of despair.

The finale, “Allegro con moto,” saw the tightest unity between orchestra and soloist, who drove relentlessly to the concerto’s end, bringing many in the audience to their feet.

From the opening chords of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 “Eroica,” from which the composer famously stripped his earlier dedication to Napoleon, the orchestra’s performance of the first movement was a study in elegance of sound. Danzmayr’s lilting tempo allowed for both graceful fluidity and fiery passion.

Danzmayr and the orchestra gave the second movement, “Marcia funebre,” a refreshingly undirgelike interpretation. The movement’s bold moments had the fearsome fury of the Day of Wrath, and its more subdued parts unveiled a crystalline balance among the sections.

Danzmayr kept the dynamic lid on the orchestra at the beginning of the third movement, “Scherzo,” then let the orchestra loose in a sudden, thrilling fortissimo. The horn trio in the movement’s middle section was jaunty and commanding.

The symphony’s final movement settled into a solid and ebullient performance of Beethoven’s theme and variations, a truly grand finale that saw the evening’s second standing ovation and reignited one’s wonder at the resiliency of the human spirit.