The Music School of Delaware Opens Season with a "Musical Bounty" for Fans

By Christine Facciolo

The Music School of Delaware opened its 2016-17 season Wednesday, September 28, 2016 by gifting its supporters with gorgeous renderings of two of the best loved works for string orchestra: Grieg’s Holberg Suite and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings in C Major.

Maestro Simeone Tartaglione conducted a string orchestra composed of music school faculty and three invited guests violists Sheila Browne and Marka Stepper and bassist Arthur Marks.

The program opened with Grieg’s Holberg Suite for String Orchestra. Composed to honor the memory of 18th Century Norwegian writer Ludvig Holberg, Grieg cast the work in the musical language of the 18th Century. Tartaglione applied a light touch, playing up the individual character of each of the work’s dance-like movements.

Following the brisk opening Praeludium was a stately Sarabande featuring a lovely dialogue between cellists Lawrence Stomberg and Eric Coyne. The Gavotte recalled the formality of the court while the Musette contrasted with a folksong quality. The deeper strings imparted a profound solemnity to the Air, one of Grieg’s most beautiful creations.  The concluding Rigaudon paid tribute to Norwegian folk violinists as it featured some virtuosic bowing by concertmaster Stefan Xhori.

Tartaglione conducted with authority and passion as he led the orchestra through Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings in C Major, an intensely personal work that the composer intended as homage to Mozart whom he viewed as the “Christ of music.” The Serenade is in a vastly different league than the Holberg: Rich in harmonic and melodic invention, it is also more abstract in character and hence more enduring.

The Serenade is Tchaikovsky at his brilliant best and Tartaglione and the musicians did it proud with flair, charm and beauty of tone. The orchestra was nimble and agile in its execution of the second movement — the Valse — with its numerous and sudden harmonic shifts. The third movement — the Elegie with its fugal elements — was ensemble playing at its best. The Finale was played with great virtuosity, bringing the concert to a close with rousing applause.

See www.musicschoolofdelaware.org. 

Newark Symphony Orchestra aims high

The Newark Symphony Orchestra played the Double Concerto in E Minor, Opus 88 for clarinet, viola and orchestra with Vincent Marinelli, clarinet and Timothy Schwarz, viola as solosits at the Independence School in Newark on Sunday.  The clarinet and viola exchanged voices easily and their ranges are remarkably complimentary.  Dr. Schwarz and Mr. Marinelli each brought out their solo lines with ease and the result was a wonderfully flowing duo with vivid dynamics and a wide range of tone.  Although the orchestra was sometimes louder than I would have liked, the soloists were heard above the orchestra most of the time, including the beautiful passage in the second movement when Dr. Schwarz’s viola had the top voice of the final cadence.

Maestro Tartaglione has been pushing his orchestra to tackle more and more difficult pieces (as has Dr. Schwarz for the Wilmington Community Orchestra), but this time, the Wagner Ride of the Valkyries was just too much of a challenge for the French horn section, which has worked so hard over the past few years and has had some glorious performances.  But in Sunday’s concert, the Overture to Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber had some horn passages which suffered from tuning issues and insecure attacks, although the orchestra in general had a steady performance with a very strong cello section and a great solo clarinet part played by Michelle Webb.

The other three Wagner preludes came off well.  Laura Grass’s solo entrances on trumpet was beautifully controlled and quite effective in the Rienzi Overture – her quiet entries and well-controlled crescendos deserved applause -  and the horns sounded good as they did in Siegfried’s Rhine Journey.  The Meistersinger Overture was a triumph for trumpet, horn, trombones and tuba, although the drums and percussion resound in the hall at the Independence School, so perhaps they could have brought it down a notch.

The concert was quite moving and having the musicians strive for a higher level of playing has paid off in the vast improvements they have made under Maestro Tartaglione.  But shouldn’t the director include at least one easier piece in every concert?

 

See www.newarksymphony.org

Tartaglione and the Titan

Maestro Simeone Tartaglione

Simeone Tartaglione has worked for two years to get the Newark Symphony to reach beyond their already fairly high level of achievement and on Sunday, May 20, he showed a large audience that he has come far in achieving that goal.

Alyssa Blackstone

Concerto winner Alyssa Blackstone was extremely confident and businesslike in her approach to the Violin Concerto No. 5 in A minor, Opus 37 by Henri Vieuxtemps.  Ms. Blackstone has no problem projecting above the orchestra, even in the lower register of the violin. She has been studying with Sylvia Ahramjian and has reached a high level of technical proficiency.   Her technique and physical strength in playing are the tools she will need as she begins to work on the subtler nuances of phrasing and interpretation in college.

The second piece on the program was the titan to which I refer in the title:  Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major.  This symphonic poem, called The Titan by the composer, is such a difficult one for any orchestra that few put it on the program.  The very large orchestration is the first hurdle:  eight horns and quadruple woodwinds. It is hard to gather the musicians or even fine a venue with space for all those musicians – but Maestro Tartaglione recruited enough players to get the mammoth Mahler sound.  There were small areas which were a bit rough, but all in all the mood of the performance evoked what I had been hearing on a CD of Zubin Mehta conducting the same piece with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

The highlight of the Mahler performance was the third movement’s wild and raucous funeral dirge based on a wood engraving showing animals as pallbearers for a hunter’s funeral.  The reversal of roles was reflected in a reversal of the expected music – Mahler based the dirge on the German folk version of the tune we know as Frère Jacques and added jazzy, irreverent klezmer interludes.  The orchestra followed Maestro Tartaglione in this ironic and abruptly changing music with ease, dipping into the whirling tunes smoothly and tunefully – even playfully. 

The crashing and clashing symbols and timpani were spot on (with excellent playing by percussionists Debra Bialecki and S. Mordecai Fuhrman on timpani and Gordon Engelgau on cymbals as well as Sergei Dickey on bass drum), but I could have done with a little less thunderous affect.

Next year’s music will seem like easy street now that they played the Mahler.  Maestro Tartaglione and the Newark Symphony deserve congratulations on a great achievement.

See www.newarksymphony.org. 

Newark Symphony Orchestra at the Independence School

Bad weather did not keep a large crowd from coming to the Independence School to hear musical director candidate Simeone Tartaglione conduct the second Newark Symphony Orchestra concert of the season. Tartaglione told the audience, “If I get the job of directing this wonderful orchestra, I would like to know what you [the orchestra] want to play and what you [the audience] want to hear.”

His version of Smetana’s The Moldau (Vitava) from Ma Vlast (My country) was quite fast. Crystal Norman’s flute brought the symphony in with gusto, but softly enough that the string pizzicato line came out delicately. The woodwinds excelled as both flutes (adding Dorothy Boyd) and two clarinets (Anthony Wastler and Shao-Tang Sun) played together in thirds and sixths.

Jeffrey Lang, Associate Principal Horn of the Philadelphia Orchestra, was able to show his beautiful French horn tone as the acoustics of the hall were great for the Horn Concerto in B-flat major by Reinold Glière. The violas deserve special praise for their clear melodic lines (how rare that they get any) and Anna Montejo played a haunting oboe melody. The soft dynamics the orchestra was able to achieve meant that everything could be heard clearly.

The Brahms Symphony No. 1 in C minor was the pinnacle of the concert. Tartaglione introduced the piece as a story of Johannes Brahms’ unrequited love for Clara Schumann which made it all the more vivid for the listener. Sally Cornell’s oboe playing was clear and smooth. Having four excellent horns was also a great bonus for an amateur orchestra. Mordecai Furhman’s timpani entrances were clear and rhythmic, spot on. And to have the alto (James Olson), tenor (Frederick Unruh) and bass trombone (Phillip Hessler) parts played that well in the chorale was quite an accomplishment.

The audience demanded an encore and got one: the Brahms Danza Ungarese No. 5, conducted with giant retards and accelerandi, making it a lusty end to a great concert.

See http://www.peabodyopera.org/faculty/conductors/tartaglione.

See www.newarksymphony.org.