Back to School With OSU
By Bryce Christensen
With
its first concert of the 2012-13 season, the Orchestra of Southern Utah (OSU)
brought listeners back to school.
But with a program culminating in Symphony No. 8 by Anton Bruckner, it
was an excitingly new school that welcomed the audience gathered at the
Heritage Center on September 27th. For Bruckner was a daringly innovative composer. .In the opinion of leading
musicologists, he “alone succeeded in creating a new school of symphonic
writing” by giving the world a “new and monumental type of symphonic
organism . . . something elemental
and metaphysical.”
But
in the first concert of its ’12-’13 Soundscapes series, OSU delivered a concert
delivering lessons from the best of the old school and the best of the
new. So before bringing its
listeners to the revolutionary new school of the Brucknerian symphony, OSU
carried them along a delightful musical road with two refreshing stops at
impressive harmonic edifices erected by that old-school Baroque schoolmaster
Johann Sebastian Bach.
As
the first of these stops, Bach’s Concerto No. 1 in C minor for Two Pianos
showcased the talents of guest soloists Ericka Dobson at one keyboard and of
OSU Assistant Conductor Gerald Rheault at the other. In fact, Rheault carried the double role of piano soloist
and orchestra director, adroitly leading OSU’s string section from his piano
bench. Though not new, the musical lessons in this first concert schoolroom
were rendered with grace and skill.
From the spritely yet elegant notes of the opening movement, to the
stately and regally cadenced measures of the second movement, to the fervent
heat of the kinetic third movement, conductor, soloists, and orchestra reminded
listeners of just how much an 18th-century genius can still teach
the 21st century about harmonic beauty.
Years
of advanced study and concert experience were evident in Rheult’s impressive
dual performance as piano soloist and conductor of the evening’s first
number. Perhaps more surprising
was the poised and memorable performance of Dobson as the second piano
soloist. Though just an
undergraduate at SUU, Dobson performed with the aplomb and self-possession of a
mature and older musical artist.
For
the second number on the evening’s program—Bach’s Cantata 196—the OSU strings
were joined by a choir under the direction of Adrianne Tawa and James
Harrison. Opening with a Baroque
richness redolent of the opulent courts of 18th-century royalty, the
strings were then joined by the resonant and well-trained voices of the choir,
singing with a devotional intensity suggestive not so much of the palatial
courts of the Enlightenment as of the magnificent cathedrals of Europe’s high
medieval era. As the soprano
soloist for the Aria, Sara Guttenberg sang a stream of liquid gold, her soaring
voice an irresistible current of vocal joy.
Melding
their voices in the darker-toned Duetto, the tenor Lawrnce Johnson and the
baritone Alex Byers together wove a textured fabric of soul-probing
striving. Familiar to Cedar City
music-lovers for his strong solos over the years in the Messiah, Johnson met and
exceeded the high expectations he has created by his past performances. But as a gifted young voice fully able
to complement the much more seasoned Johnson, Byers identified himself as a
rising star in Cedar City’s musical skies.
In
the final section of the Cantata, the combined voices of the full chorus
swelled in a jubilant uprising of devout passion, point and counterpoint
merging in a brilliant tapestry of worshipful complexity.
After
the intermission, having twice visited the venerable schoolroom maintained by
Bach, OSU was ready for its marvelously new-school destination: the Finale of Bruckner’s Symphony No.
8. Even in this excerpt from
the complete Symphony, listeners thrilled to the bold originality of Bruckner’s
symphonic architecture, an architecture that frequently shifts in vertiginous
ways.
Taut
with tension in its opening notes, the Finale transitions unpredictably—now
reflectively tranquil, now morosely brooding, now martially combative, now
angelically celestial, now infernally fiery, and now coolly quiescent. To meet
the challenge of this daunting number, the full OSU orchestra added the talents
of the Symphony Orchestra of Southern Utah. Some of the abrupt musical transitions made unusual
demands on listeners. But it is a
high tribute to the gifts of OSU conductor and director Xun Sun that he drew
from the combined orchestras a sustained interpretive sensitivity through all
of the diverse moods of this difficult masterpiece. Whether in pacific calm or turbulent kineticism, conductor
and orchestras delivered musicianship of the highest order. Under Sun’s ardent baton, strings,
winds, brass, and percussion all met the demanding test that Bruckner set
before them, and did so with praiseworthy distinction.
Under
a musical spell that persisted after the last round of applause had died away,
the audience for this first OSU concert of the season left the concert hall
deeply grateful for the opportunity to be back at school under the tutelage of
such inspiring musical masters. Lessons as musically
rewarding as the ones OSU delivered in this concert indeed left listeners
counting the days until OSU class is back in session in November, when Bach,
Beethoven, and Strauss will set the curriculum.
