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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2008 > December > 03 > Entry
Review: Two concerts at UT’s Butler School of Music
Two rewarding nights at UT’s Butler School of Music started Monday with the UT Symphony Orchestra’s final concert of the semester.
Under the direction of Gerhardt Zimmermann, who is now in his third season at UT, the student orchestra sounds better than ever of late. And Monday’s concert at Bates Recital Hall proved that. Full of brio and vigor, here was a group of orchestral musicians that charged the music they were playing with excitement. No, it wasn’t just youthful energy on display (though that’s certainly a factor). More, it was an orchestra ardently engaged with its conductor.
With its sweepingly broad melody and short one movement length, Sibelius’s Andante Festivo for a string orchestra suggest that it might slip away before arriving. But Zimmermann gave the Festivo an immediately festive and noble feel. And he proved one this orchestra’s best talents: It can play quietly with great clarity and emotion.
Clarinetist Sarunas Jankauskas thoroughly impressed with Crusell’s dramatic and demanding Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra which the 18th-century Finnish composer and clarinetist wrote for himself. Jankauskas knew exactly what to do with the technically demanding piece to make it sparkle and not overwhelm with fussy virtuosity, by bringing a rich tone to even the most breathlessly fast passages.
The symbiotic artistry between Zimmermann and the orchestra shined in the concert’s second half, first with Kodaly’s stirring Varitions on a Hungarian Folksong “The Peacock.” The confident, clean-sounding brass section nicely punctuated the cinematic swoops of Kodaly’s defiant yet celebratory score.
But with Bernstein’s lively Divertimento for Orchestra, Zimmermann and the musicians let the élan explode. A vigorous light-hearted piece that Bernstein composed in 1980 as gift for the 100th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Divertimento demonstrates how Bernstein liked to throw in everything — and the kitchen sink — into many of his works. With the stage crammed with musicians (the piano only poked out about halfway from the wings) Zimmermann kept Bernstein’s blithe and musically witty celebration in sharp focus. And the orchestra responded with sonorous clarity.
Tuesday, again at Bates Recital Hall, the UT New Music Ensemble, directed by Dan Welcher, delivered an engaging program.
The stand out was Dries Berghman’s Archetypes, a cerebral yet beautiful three-movement piece for chamber orchestra. Berghman took an elegiac theme and unwound it through different moods and styles moving from swirling gestures to jaunty stylings to pretty explosions of joyful sounds. Archetypes was artistically mature — remarkable that it came from a 22-year-old who has yet to graduate.
Also receiving something of a premiere was Yevgeniy Sharlat’s revised Concertino for Viola and Eight Players. The viola — played by guest artist Sharon Wei St. John — tussled with the chamber orchestra through a series of complex movements. High Classical harmonies and structures came together than slid apart into shades of dissonance. The viola slipped into and out of unity with the ensemble. This Concertino was intellectually and compositionally an interesting exercise if didn’t always solicit big emotion.
Also on the program was Jacob Druckman’s Come Round to which Welcher gave a clear and tight presentation.
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