Review: Richmond Symphony

George Manahan conducting
April 25, Second Baptist Church, Richmond

Give George Manahan a complex, colorful modern score and he will give you a performance to remember. Multiply that by three and you have the program Manahan conducts in his first dates with the Richmond Symphony since he left the orchestra 10 years ago to become music director of the New York City Opera.

In what he drolly calls "a nostalgic look back at the good old days of the 20th century," Manahan brings extraordinary vividness and vitality to Debussy’s "La Mer," Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto, with Karen Johnson, the symphony’s concertmaster, as soloist.

Johnson, performing on a high stool as she mends a broken foot, plays a highly collaborative role in the Stravinsky, which casts the violin as an interlocutor more than as a conventional solo voice. The composer harks back to – at times virtually quotes – his "L’histoire du Soldat" ("The Soldier’s Tale"), in which the violin carries on running dialogues with trumpet and other instruments in a chamber ensemble. Here, the solo violin’s exchanges are with orchestral soloists, most prominently bassoon and trumpet, as well as each section of the orchestra.

The violinist, with bassoonist Jonathan Friedman, trumpeter Rolla Durham and other partners, sustained a lively, largely good-humored discourse in the first of three weekend performances. She tone was brightly projected and focused but not loud, and expressively austere, even in the relatively lyrical showcase Stravinsky gives the soloist in the second aria movement.

The alert, rhythmically pointed and color-sensitive playing that Manahan obtained in the Stravinsky was matched, although on far broader soundscapes, in the Debussy and Bartók.

"La Mer," of course, bathes in tone color (both subtle and garish) and generates great waves of sonority; but this music’s impact is compounded in a reading that attends to details of rhythm, dynamics and balance. Manahan and the orchestra clearly had seen to those details in rehearsal, and so were able to deliver a performance of crystalline clarity that did not stint on spontaneity.

The Bartók was, in a word, amazing. The score calls for every soloist and section of the orchestra to play virtuosically, and everyone played up to that standard. (The strings' figurations in a quite briskly paced finale were especially impressive.) Normally precarious balances in the orchestration sounded naturally even-keeled; treacherous rhythmic currents were negotiated faultlessly, seemingly effortlessly; every color and accent was in its place and packed its intended punch.

Great care obviously went into preparing this work, but it sounded like play – music as extreme sport, you could say. I have never heard the wit of this piece better expressed, or its colors more vividly rendered, or its varied strains of energy more powerfully harnessed. This belongs on the short list of greatest performances in the orchestra's half-century history.

The program repeats at 8 p.m. April 26 at First Baptist Church in Richmond and 8 p.m. April 28 at St. Michael Catholic Church in Glen Allen. Tickets: $20-$50. Details: (804) 788-1212; www.richmondsymphony.com