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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > October > 11 > Entry
Review: Austin Symphony Orchestra and Judith Ingolfsson
The Austin Symphony Orchestra’s second concert this season lacked calling-card masterworks but surprised with moving melodies, an offbeat Berlioz symphony and a virtually unheard Schumann violin concerto featuring Iceland’s Judith Ingolfsson, conducted by Peter Bay.
On Friday night at the Long Center, two harps opened “Vysehrad,” the lyrical first movement from Bedrich Smetana’s anthem to his homeland, “Ma Vlast.” The strings showed beautiful balance, especially as the theme traveled back and forth.
At one point the violas played a remarkably breathless tremolo, a moment that stood in contrast to trumpet lines that felt exposed, struggling to blend. The cymbals, too sounded a little dry.
Leaving patriotic homages far, far behind, Ingolfsson graced the stage in an elegant gown, whose rose, peach and gold stripes popped against the orchestra’s black. Her violin sang with technical runs, chords and spot-on arpeggios, staying ever so slightly in front of the orchestra.
Schumann’s only violin concerto is one of music’s ugly ducklings. Composed just before the composer’s suicide attempt, it forever held that association and was hidden for nearly a century. The piece holds quite a melancholic spirit, and in the latter movements falls somewhat listless.
Nevertheless, the audience was grateful for hearing it, and stood for Ingolfsson’s playing, which compelled an encore that seemed perhaps a touch hasty.
Ingolfsson’s Bach sarabande was welcome, however. It was equally contemplative, without great flair, but with a raw, haunting quality.
Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14” straddled the Classical and Romantic periods, with a wildly bombastic final movement.
With moments almost stereotypically Classical, the long work has a tendency to dull your interest, until a timpani clangs you out of any stupor.
Unlike much of the acoustic music played in Dell Hall, which is often so quiet as to give the impression the orchestra is playing in a separate room, Berlioz’s loudest sections almost rattled you out of your chair.
The familiar third movement was forcefully played, with the trumpets leading the march. The bassoons and oboes offered confident and lyrical lines, including a fine staccato.
Later, a few french horn entries fished for pitch, but this sat as the only issue in the finely played symphony.
The final movement, a truly bizarre sonic romp, uses every section of the orchestra to paint a scene the composer called “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath.”
Its triumphant horn melodies are broken by jarring percussion, teetering strings, and finally anchored by clanging bells, which were played through the stage’s back entrance, as if to let the dreamer know the real world is far away.
Luke Quinton is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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