By John Farrell
The whole, they say, is greater than the sum of its parts. That is especially so when the whole ends up having more parts than originally announced.
Such was the case Saturday night when the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Enrique Arturo Diemecke gave the long-anticipated premier of David Newman’s Concerto for Winds at the Terrace Theater of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center.
The anticipation has been going on since the symphony announced its commission to Newman more than a year ago. Newman, a well-known film composer in his own right and son of film composer Alfred Newman, was asked to create a concerto featuring five orchestral wind instruments. There would be a movement for each of five instruments -- clarinet, oboe, bassoon, flute and French horn -- one movement performed at each of the orchestra’s first five concerts and combined into an organic whole for the final evening of the season.
That plan worked well from October of last year through last month, with Newman collaborating with each of five principals from the LBSO: flautist Heather Clark, oboist Leslie Reed, clarinetist Gary Bovyer, bassoonist Julie Feves and French horn player Calvin Smith. But Saturday night things had changed a bit. The five individual movements were intact (if altered and fine tuned a bit by the composer) but Newman also added three movements: a prelude, an interlude and a coda to create a complete work just over half-an-hour long.
Audiences had enjoyed and applauded Newman’s short individual movements over the season, but the final work was nonetheless a bit of a revelation. The composer’s overall vision of the interplay of themes and instrumental forces, the relationship between the movements and their cumulative power, enhanced by the three added movements: all this was new and intriguing. The way Newman again and again used the three brighter instrument (clarinet, flute and oboe) as a cohesive trio was one noticeable detail. Another was his effective use of the large orchestral forces with more musicians on stage than even for the Tchaikovsky work that preceded it Saturday night.
Newman showed that he knew how to manage those forces with great artistry, sometimes asking for delicate clarity, at other times for pure power. The interlude he created for the middle of the eight-movement work was deliciously fast and brilliant, his jazzy rhythms for the clarinet balanced against the deeper and more somber sounds of the bassoon. Each solo instrument had its own character, and Newman also included a solo violin part in the work, played by Concertmaster Roger Wilkie with his usual skill.
The final judgment on Newman’s work won’t be given here. Many audience members loved it, though some thought it not melodious enough. But in its soaring lyricism and bright, vital energy, its clever generosity of feeling and its passionate understanding of instrumental possibilities, it was much more than its separate parts promised. Composer Newman got two ovations when he joined the soloists and orchestra on stage, and deserved them.
Besides Newman, the other two stars of Saturday’s performance were Romeo and Juliet, the two tragic lovers created by Shakespeare. Two great works inspired by the play framed the world premiere.
The evening opened with the Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy by Tchaikovsky, a worked beloved by music lovers and especially well-suited to a large orchestra finishing its annual season. At year’s end, every musician is playing at his or her best, and the rich sound of so many talented performers at their best, playing a work of such majestic and thrilling orchestral power, was a delight to hear. Diemecke shattered the hall with the works occasional bursts of raw power, but balanced strings and winds for moments of delicate intimacy as well. The work is a familiar one, but heard live it remains fascinating, powerful and intriguing.
Prokofiev created a ballet on the same subject some 65 years after Tchaikovsky’s romantic overture, partly because, in Soviet Russia, the theme of “Romeo and Juliet” was politically safe. However, it took years before the ballet was finally performed, years in which Prokofiev kept the music before the public in a series of suites from the work.
Diemecke chose seven numbers from those suites for Saturday’s performance, and the music, if not as lush and richly melodic, was every bit as challenging for the orchestra, calling for a balance between Celeste and strings, between winds and percussion, creating an edgy beauty that mixed the romantic with the tragic and the modern with the older lyricism of Russian ballet.
The orchestra was clearly enjoying itself, and, as the final work on the regular season, the Prokofiev got special treatment and the orchestra a triple standing ovation of good-by.
The concert marked the season end for the orchestra, but the LBSO will play another concert before opening the 2007-2008 season next October 6 at the Terrace Theater, a special concert at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach on Thursday, July 26.
-- John Farrell is a Long Beach freelance writer whose work appears in the Long Beach Press-Telegram and San Gabriel Valley Tribune.
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