Pianist Peter Donohoe, left, and conductor Valentin Radu after the concert Friday night. |
The Ama
Deus Ensemble, with guest soloist Peter Donohoe, served up an exciting concert
Friday evening. It was a long program – more than two and a half hours, with
intermission – but it sure didn’t feel like it. Donohoe joined the orchestra in performances
of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and the Concerto in F, as well as the regional
premiere of Aaron Copland’s 1926 Piano Concerto. Any one of those would have
made the evening feel complete, but as Peter said afterward, he had traveled a
long way for this concert. He might as well try to fit everything in.
Gershwin’s
third big concert piece, An American in Paris, was also thrown in for good
measure at the end of the first half.
The
Piano Concerto is not one of Copland’s more famous works, or even, to be
honest, one of his best, though it foreshadows the aggressive symphonic jazz Leonard
Bernstein would develop in West Side Story. Donohoe and company gave a
convincing, confident-sounding reading that betrayed none of the trepidation they
must have felt in the face of such complex and unfamiliar music. For me, it was
the highlight of the program, even if the Gershwin melodies that followed stick
more tenaciously in the mind. Donohoe, reading from a score, was riveting, and
the orchestra snapped to attention behind him, which was a relief after the curtain
raiser, a somewhat lackluster reading of some lackluster movie music by John
Williams. The ensemble stayed at that higher level for the rest of the night, especially
in the Rhapsody, when it achieved some moments of genuine grandeur.
I should
also mention clarinetist Arne Running and trumpeter Scott McIntosh, who reveled
in the solo passages provided by Gershwin. McIntosh, especially, shone in all the blues, the glissandi and the muted wah-wahs. For a few indelible moments,
he transformed the Perelman into Preservation Hall.