By Harry Forbes
VHRP Artistic Director Alyce Mott has capped an extraordinary run of operettas and musicals by the great Irish-American composer Victor Herbert (1859-1924) with a superb concert of some of Herbert’s best purely orchestral works.
The event bookended her equally impressive 2014 concert reading of Herbert’s unjustly neglected 1911 grand opera “Natoma.” This one featured a very fine orchestra of 47 players conducted by Steven Byess, for years a mainstay at Ohio Light Opera where he conducted numerous Herbert works.
On this occasion, he conducted with his customary sensitivity, and under his practiced baton, the orchestra responded with nuance and precision. Nearly all of the works can be heard on myriad CD recordings, but hearing them live, particularly in the warmly resonant acoustics of the St-Jean Baptiste church, the aural experience was especially sublime.
Several of the works -- hugely popular concert pieces in their day -- incorporated traditional tunes gloriously orchestrated by Herbert, rather in the manner of the Golden Age Hollywood composers. I felt tears welling up at the first gorgeous strains of the “Swanee River” refrain of Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home” in the concert’s opener, the 1901 American Fantasia. The 1892 Irish Rhapsody draws on familiar Gallic melodies, and the evening’s concluding Auditorium Festival March from 1901 included the poignant strains of “Auld Lang Syne.”
There was a backstory to the inclusion of that particular tune, as related by Mott who introduced each piece, microphone in hand, from the front pew. Her setup of each piece demonstrated her deep knowledge and affection for the material, especially as she enjoined us to imagine ourselves present at the first performance of these works, and conjure what our reaction would have been.
Of the purely Herbert works such as the 1901 Panamericana, the Act III Prelude to Natoma was a spectacular standout, and a warm reminder of that earlier performance of the full opera. So, too, the 1924 Suite of Serenades -- written for Paul Whiteman’s jazz orchestra and preceding the premiere of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue on the same bill -- demonstrated Herbert’s stylistic and ethnic versatility with its richly varied Spanish, Chinese, Cuban and Oriental movements. The once enormously popular “Serenade” from his 1883 Suite for Cello and Orchestra featured outstanding solo work by Daniel Scoggins.
Also just excerpted was the “Vision of Columbus” section of his 1892 Columbus Suite.
The 1884 Royal Sec, a sparkling item which would not be out of place at one of those Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s concerts, received a fizzy performance at the opening of the second half of the concert, and I might add, Byess and his forces sounded a not-far match for that distinguished Austrian ensemble.
The evening was capped with an exotic encore: a Persian Dance from an extended Persian scene in The Ziegfeld Follies of 1921.
(Eglise St-Jean Baptiste, 184 E 76 Street; May 1)
Photos by Charles Chessler
Top - Steven Byess & Orchestra
Below - Steven Byess
0 comments:
Post a Comment