Spy Review: Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra Season-Opener, by Steve Parks

You could say that the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra trumpeted the opening of the fall arts season at the acoustically pleasing Easton Church of God Thursday night, except that it was mostly strings that heralded the “Violin Virtuoso” concert series, which continues with performances this weekend in Lewes, Delaware and Ocean Pines, Maryland.

The 27th season of the Delmarva Peninsula’s only fully professional symphony orchestra, led by Grammy-winning music director Michael Repper, got off to an exhilarating start with a program that, on the surface, might appear to be a medley of dead European composers’ greatest hits. Johannes Brahms, a heavyweight in his class of composers, wrote his only two classical overtures in 1880 – the fittingly brooding Tragic Overture and, as a bookend in temperament, the celebratory Academic Festival Overture, perhaps the most popular piece of his career as a successor to Romantic-period forebears, Beethoven and Bach.

If there was to be comedy tomorrow, reversing the order in the song from “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” it was, indeed, tragedy tonight. Still, the overture’s opening allegro suggests robust assertiveness rather than gloomy foreboding The middle Moderato movement settles unexpectedly into a peaceful, march-like interlude. In the concluding third movement, Brahms intertwines rapidly evolving counterpoints between tumult and moody reflection, of which each fully engaged section of the orchestra keeps up with the furious race to the finish.

The next long-dead European composer on the program, was essentially making her concert debut. Alice Mary Smith was the first British woman to compose symphonies – two to her credit – in the latter half of the 19th century. Back then it would have been as likely that a woman composer could get a symphony published, much less performed, than it might be today for a woman to play tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, regardless of Taylor Swift’s enamor for that position on the field.

Smith had two things going for her: A family of some means that helped get her into London’s Royal Academy to study music and a talent that put her in the same league with male contemporaries. Though she was not very widely recognized in her lifetime, she is by no means a fluke. Modern recordings of her two symphonies, including No. 2 in A Minor, accessible now on YouTube, prove that she should have been taken seriously and only recently – 140 years after her  death in 1884 – has been appreciated.

Repper is one who noticed her work. And as a champion of underperformed composers, mostly women and/or African-Americans, he conducts performances of these long-lost or disregarded symphonies and concertos.

Smith’s Symphony No. 2 opens with a bold Allegro as if to stand her symphonic ground against her almost exclusively male fellow composers. The second movement Andante introduces lyrical contrasts to tensions of the first, providing a tenderly reflective mood that sets the stage for the third movement’s rhythmic syncopation while adding a danceable theme to Smith’s symphonic palette. The Allegro finale reintroduces themes from each of the previous movements, building to a climactic and confident close.

Following intermission, soloist Grace Park, winner of the prestigious Naumburg International Violin Competition, set the pace for the orchestra as assuredly as music director Repper. It was not so much her virtuosity as the inventive piece itself, created by Felix Mendelssohn, still another long dead composer. He succumbed at age 47 to overwork and the heartbreak of his beloved sister Fanny’s passing. Mendelssohn’s groundbreaking Violin Concerto changed how such concertos were composed and presented for the next century and a half.

Orchestras customarily set the tone of the opening theme of a concerto while the soloist bided his or her time. But from the start of his “Violin Concerto” the attention is riveted on the soloist, thanks to Mendelssohn’s innovations. Another change he introduced was that the three movements of his concerto are played almost as one – with little or no pause in between.

The effect is to make the soloist the star attraction almost throughout the piece. It works best, of course, if the violinist can garner that attention in a spell-binding way. Grace Park did so with near breathless aplomb, fulfilling her solo role with dexterity and authority. The orchestra also fulfilled its supporting role. The bassoon marks the transition between the first movement with a sustained B note, led by Terry Ewell, followed by a rise to C in moving on to the tenderly melodic second movement. Meanwhile, the string section, featuring concertmaster Kimberly McCollum and her associate William Wang, gives the soloist a bit of a break. Finally, there’s the briefest pause while Park plays the last whisper of a phrase before diving in with a sprinter’s burst of speed, punctuated with pizzicato gymnastics as woodwinds led by Rachael Yokers on flute and Cheryl Sanborn on clarinet join in to complete a triumphant finish.

After a couple of standing-ovation bows, Park returned to center-stage for a solo encore. “What do you play after that?” she asked. “Maybe some Bach.” As fine as Park performed the Bach encore, it was child’s play for someone of such great skill and presence.

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Violin Virtuoso’

Thursday night at Easton Church of God. Two more performances at 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28, Cape Henlopen High School, Lewes, Delaware, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29, Community Church, Ocean Pines. midatlanticsymphony.org

A footnote: The MSO ratified a new three-year collective bargaining agreement with the musicians represented by the Musicians’ Association of Metropolitan Baltimore late last month. So Delmarva’s only professional symphony orchestra is good to go for at least another three years.