South Florida Symphony Concert

 

By Harry Schroeder

 

The South Florida Symphony (formerly the Key West Symphony Orchestra), under the baton of its musical director Sebrina Maria Alfonso, gave its second concert of the season last Saturday evening at the Tennessee Williams Theater. The concert consisted of Ravel’s “Bolero,” Samuel Barber’s “Concerto for Piano and Orchestra,” with Christopher Taylor at the piano, and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” It was an audaciously chosen program, and entirely successful.

The “Bolero” has never been a favorite of mine. My taste does not run to repetitive music, and my early experience of that piece was rather spoiled by an acquaintance at university, who was known to use it, along with pitchers of martinis, in his attempts, mostly failed, to seduce college girls. But Sebrina’s was an exemplary reading, as was the playing. The piece is one extended crescendo, something like fifteen minutes’ worth. That’s a very long time to maintain control of the dynamics of a full orchestra—it’s hard to keep things from sagging. They did not. The crescendo was steady throughout.

The Barber piece, which won a Pulitzer Prize, is one of his best known compositions. Mr. Taylor, described by the Boston Globe as “the leading American pianist of his generation,” gave it a very powerful performance, which earned him and Sebrina a standing ovation to three recalls. The second, slow, movement proved that atonality can be beautiful, in the piano part and especially in some lovely, pensive oboe playing. The piece is hard to play—everything has to be done accurately, or it runs the risk of collapsing into noise, and since the music is not rhythmically regular, keeping the orchestra together with the soloist is difficult, but that seemed to give Sebrina no trouble.

The Mussorgsky piece was originally written for piano and later given full orchestration; its “Pictures” were paintings by the composer’s late friend Viktor Hartmann. The orchestra performed with exceptionally accurate intonation, and Sebrina’s conducting, there and throughout the evening, resulted in some of the most enthusiastic playing I’ve heard from these people. One version of the repeated main Mussorgsky theme was played by Michael Ennis on alto saxophone: played beautifully, with the finesse of a good cellist. That instrument early on achieved extraordinary expressiveness in jazz, but elsewhere it was for a long time banished to military music, and such like. As Mr. Ennis’s playing demonstrated, in the hands of the best players the saxophone has lately risen to the level of refinement of the more traditional winds.

Sebrina re-invents the orchestra for each concert series. This version was slightly larger than usual, with seventy-eight players, including some instruments, like the contrabassoon and the bass clarinet, which appear relatively infrequently. Two thirds of the orchestra, including the concertmaster Katherine Hannauer, were new to the organization. All the woodwind sections—flutes, clarinets, oboes, bassoons—had new principals, and all sounded exceptionally fine. Dan Wions, returning as principal horn, demonstrated again a fine controlled sensitivity. I was especially impressed by the solidly aggressive statement by principal trumpet JoAnn Lamolino which opened and announced the Mussorgsky.

This orchestra is a great gift to the island. It offers the best music we get here, by a wide margin. It sets musical standards which provide a trickle-down effect on much local music generally. And it has a broader if less obvious effect. The downside of the island’s traditional and admirable air of relaxed tolerance is that almost nothing in the local culture demands or even encourages the kind of craftsmanly precision which every player in this orchestra consistently displays; nor is there much about the place which produces beauty of the kind regularly achieved in that concert hall. Every time those people come to town, they raise the stakes. Thanks again.

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