When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Holland Performing Arts Center, 1200 Douglas St.
Tickets: $9.75 to $75; call 345-0606.
The Omaha Symphony's recent Masterworks programs have seemed a lot like advanced-placement music classes.
Over the past couple of months, music director Thomas Wilkins has challenged the audience with a daunting 21st-century flute concerto and a thorny 20th-century symphony. Listeners who didn't study their program notes were in trouble.
This weekend's program is more like the class a nice professor holds outside on a beautiful spring day. Wilkins is devoting his final Masterworks program to the most familiar and appealing works of Beethoven. These pieces –– Prometheus Overture, Violin Concerto and Fifth Symphony –– received bracing renditions Friday at the Holland Performing Arts Center.
Prometheus, of course, was the mythological figure whose liver was eaten every day by a giant eagle.
Beethoven's overture to his ballet “The Creatures of Prometheus,” however, is more concerned with Prometheus' wily intelligence than his vital organs. The music is witty, charming and full of fast, ethereal passages. Wilkins and the orchestra gave this music a buoyant reading.
Beethoven's “Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61,” is widely and correctly perceived as the greatest work of its kind in the repertoire. The piece is a perfect integration of solo instrument and symphony, with the violin's seamless lines woven beautifully into the fabric of the orchestra. Stefan Jackiw (jack-EEV), the soloist in this concerto, delivered a memorable performance.
Throughout the performance, the 25-year-old Jackiw played with a robust sound, lyrical tone, flawless intonation and effortless technique. His interpretation of the opening allegro was remarkable for its soaring lyricism. He played the larghetto as a kind of gentle reverie and the finale as a spirited exaltation.
Wilkins was the steadiest of partners, eliciting playing from the orchestra that was often majestic and always nuanced –– the delicate playing at the end of the first-movement cadenza was polished to perfection.
The highlight of this weekend's program is Beethoven's “Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67.” This remarkable piece, composed in 1808, contains what can be called the most famous four notes in all of music –– the three G's and E-flat that open the first movement.
The work's titanic struggle between dark C minor and bright C major has become a timeless metaphor for transcendence. Anyone who has overcome some kind of adversity –– Beethoven had to overcome deafness –– can readily identify with this work.
Wilkins' interpretation puts the emphasis where it belongs –– at the end of the symphony. He avoids the sonic violence often heard in the opening allegro con brio, opting instead for a reading that is elegant and intelligently paced. He called for color and lyricism in the slow movement before beginning a relentless build-up of dark tension in the third-movement scherzo. The finale seemingly exploded in a blaze of C major, bringing the symphony –– and the season –– to triumphal conclusion.
Contact the writer:
444-1076, john.pitcher@owh.com
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