TIt was a day that saw the first, small accumulation of snow in town, at the end of a week that saw the most precipitous fall of the stock market in more than a generation. It was, in an uncanny way, a perfect day for a concert by the Missoula Symphony Orchestra.
“I never thought that the Dow dropping several thousand points in a week could be good for a symphony concert,” joked conductor Darko Butorac at the beginning of the second half of Sunday’s concert, to much laughter from the audience. “But I think this music is reflective of these troubled times.”
He got that right. Sunday’s program consisted of two major works, Edward Elgar’s lush yet unsettled Cello Concerto, and Johannes Brahms’ monumental First Symphony. Especially when set alongside the only short work on the program n the unabashedly cheerful overture to “Ruslan and Ludmilla” by Mikhail Glinka n the two main works seemed to create a single, overarching narrative of doubt and gloom that ultimately gave way to hope.
“Art can remind us,” Butorac noted in his mid-concert talk, “that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”
There is indeed. But we’ll get to that in due time.
First up was Glinka’s lightweight overture, a piece that Butorac told the Missoulian last week “pretty much plays itself.” It seemed to do just that on Sunday, dashing off at a breathless pace that sustained from first note to last.
Then came Elgar’s Cello Concerto, a piece written shortly after World War I. Reflecting the prevailing mood during Elgar’s age in England, the piece is one of the most introspective and least “showy” concertos in the repertoire.
Soloist Denise Djokic took Elgar’s pensive mood and stretched it nearly to somnambulance. Employing consistently slow tempos and a playing style that emphasized soft lyricism over muscle, Djokic savored the many beautiful melodies of the music, at some expense of power or passion. When she did play fast and furious, as at the end of the first movement or again at the concerto’s conclusion, her music lacked volume and some degree of shape. Conversely, her fade-to-black conclusion of the second movement, matched perfectly by the orchestra behind her, was spellbinding. The soft-edged interpretation ultimately culminated in a finale that felt more fatalistic than cataclysmic.
After intermission and Butorac’s address to the audience, the orchestra picked up seemingly where it had left off, with the funereal opening march of Brahms’ First Symphony. Paced at a lumbering gait, the orchestra built a powerful sense of intensity in those first few bars n an intensity that ultimately sustained through to the music’s triumphal ending.
Technically difficult and emotionally wide-ranging, the First Symphony demands much of an orchestra, both in terms of individual playing and ensemble sensitivity. The four-movement work is full of passages in which melodies are passed freely between instruments and sections in hot-potato fashion. The interlocking intricacy makes for huge challenges to orchestras; players must be constantly aware of the relative role of their parts, while still shaping each note in a way that connects it to everything around it.
In this respect especially, Sunday’s performance was illuminating. Nowhere in the ebbing-and-flowing first movement did the orchestra’s focus fade; each phrase led naturally to the next, stitching together a thread that led to a powerful ending. In the hushed second movement, Butorac maintained a tight reign on the orchestra, pulling each beautiful melody into perfect balance and shape with the shimmering textures underneath. In a performance full of highlights, concertmistress Margaret Baldridge’s singing second-movement violin solo stood out especially.
By the time the third movement rolled around, the orchestra seemed ready to burst forth; yet Butorac pushed forward and downward, creating a kind of musical bottleneck through which much energy flowed in small sounds. It all poured forth, finally, in the fourth movement, with a string of highlights too long to list: a pizzicato string passage in which the orchestra accelerated to a heart-pounding climax in perfect unison; a fiendishly difficult syncopated passage for full orchestra that led to the final re-statement of the triumphal theme.
Nothing that Brahms threw at the players seemed to trip up the MSO on this day. By the time the last notes finally resounded through the University Theatre, one could see audience members already raising their hands, barely able to wait to cheer.
Thus ended the orchestra’s finest performance in at least a year, maybe two.
And then, the satiated crowd poured out into the street, shielding their eyes in surprise from the dazzling sunlight of a suddenly, unexpectedly glorious afternoon.
A light at the end of the tunnel, indeed.