Netanel Draiblate
SYMPHONY REVIEW
High spirits ruled the stage during the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra's Friday evening concert at the Fulton Opera House. The evening started off with the presentation of the 51st Composer's Award to George Tsontakis and the performance of his five-movement "Laconika."
Tsontakis, who has numerous commissions, awards (including a Grammy nomination) and recordings to his credit, studied composition with Hugo Weisgall, Roger Sessions and Franco Donatoni.
He was born in 1951 in Astoria, N.Y., and has drawn on his Greek heritage for many of his works. "Laconika" is one such work: the title plays off the name of the capitol city of Sparta and the pithy, terse, "laconic" qualities it suggests. (It also is a pun on the acronym for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, which commissioned the work.)
Bill Adams presented Tsontakis with the award, and Tsontakis, who conducted his own work, shared thoughts about how conducting influenced his experience of music, describing it as rising up through the feet, "a very visceral experience."
Tsontakis also talked about the experience of being a contemporary composer in a world of "golden oldies."
"You have to think about where these great works come from. No one said 'write a masterpiece because we're going to play it a lot in 150 to 200 years.' What would film be like if there were no new movies?" he asked. "Young people want to hear what is written today."
"Laconika" has five brief movements, "Alarming," "Lacomotion," "Mercurial," "Laconicrimosa" and "Twilight." Pithy yet quirky, the music embodies the traits suggested by those titles, yet undercuts them in unexpected ways. Moods are established in the strings only to be broken by tuned and untuned percussion, muted trumpets and bird calls from the woodwinds.
Violin soloist Netanel Draiblate is familiar to audiences as LSO concertmaster and assistant concertmaster. This time, he took the soloist spot (with Noemi Milaradovic as concertmaster) for Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64, conducted by Stephen Gunzenhauser.
This 1844 work, played without pauses, was written for another concertmaster, Mendelssohn's friend Ferdinand David. And from the moment Draiblate started playing, right from the start of the work, his performance seemed to emerge from the orchestral fabric rather than sit on top of it. His performance was neither pushy nor overly dramatic, and brought its own beauty to this often-performed piece.
This is not to say the performance wasn't virtuosic — Draiblate had all the technique the piece called for, and more. In the first movement cadenza, which Draiblate wrote, he brought out all kinds of tricky manoeuvres while fitting in with the piece's style and content. But he wore the soloist's mantle lightly, and that made the performance special.
The performance was also a crowd-pleaser, bringing the audience to its feet.
And for his encore, Draiblate continued to amaze and delight the audience with an astonishing performance of the Variations on "God Save the King" by Niccolo Paganini, a piece that, like some acrobats, manages to be incredibly difficult and quite silly at the same time. The piece actually drew some chuckles from the audience, and a second and well-deserved standing ovation.
The second half of the concert continued the cheerful mood with the "Toy Symphony" (Cassation in G for Orchestra and Toys), a 1769 work attributed to Leopold Mozart, the father of Wolfgang Mozart.
A viola-less string section accompanied a section of six toy players: bird whistles, a tin trumpet, a small drum, a rattle and a triangle, played by orchestra members and some guests. It was a charming work and the toy players were obviously having a good time.
The concert concluded with the Symphony No. 8 in F Major, Op. 93 by Ludwig van Beethoven, a work given a lively and powerful reading by the orchestra, one that seemed to sum up the various threads of the evening: the power of music to communicate joy and lift the spirits.
The orchestra will perform today at 3 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 7:30 p.m.
