At Thursday’s Okanagan Symphony concert, aptly entitled Kaleidoscope, all three pieces, Pierre Mercure’s Kaleidoscope (the inspiration for the overall title), Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Concerto in C Minor for piano, and César Franck’s Symphony in D Minor, met expectations.
To facilitate that, at her highly recommended pre-concert talk, OSO conductor Rosemary Thomson shared her insights and enthusiasm, as well as her gift for clearly explaining the mechanics of the music in the program. Her talks, often including a short singing lesson or an opportunity to clap or click a unique rhythm sequence, appreciably enhance the concert experience. Consequently, when she conducted Mercure’s Kaleidoscope, those who had attended her talk enjoyed an increased awareness of its blended colours, layers, rhythm combinations and development of shapes and textures.
The world is poorer musically for the loss of Mercure, already an accomplished Canadian musician, composer and entrepreneur when he was killed in a car crash in 1966, aged 38. His adeptness at piano, organ, flute, cello, trumpet and bassoon, informed the way he wrote specifically for each orchestral section.
Each section of the OSO, augmented by members of the Youth Symphony of the Okanagan, captured his constant changes of light and colour.
(The YSO performs Dvorak’s New World Symphony at 7.30 p.m. May 4 at Trinity United Church.)
Rachmaninoff’s Concerto in C Minor was played sublimely by Minsoo Sohn at the piano, despite its aged inability to hold its tune beyond the first movement. Jan Walden of the North Okanagan Community Concert Association, which owns the instrument, agreed that it’s time to launch a fundraiser to replace it; or perhaps find a successful local business interested in sponsoring a new Steinway grand. But Sohn could coax euphony from a bashed-up-bar-honky-tonk, and NOCCA’s piano isn’t that. The packed audience sat enraptured throughout, even between movements. And as he played the final chords of this constantly flowing romantic journey through swelling crescendos, febrile races across the keys and delicate passages filled with pathos, the crowd rose as one.
The OSO was with Sohn all the way too, and the retired Edmonton Symphony horn player sitting beside me said he had been unaware of an orchestra of this calibre in the Okanagan.
It’s no wonder David Lean used this concerto in his 1945 film adaptation of Noel Coward’s heart-wrenching play, Brief Encounter, about a couple trapped in a passionate, forbidden love affair.
Franck’s Symphony in D Minor has also graced film scores, most recently in Double Identity, starring Val Kilmner and Izabella Miko. Like Mercure, Franck was killed in a road accident, although he was knocked down by a “horse omnibus” in 1890, aged 67.
This was Thomson’s first time conducting Franck’s only symphony, composed the year before he died. My French horn player neighbour remarked that she completely understood Franck’s voice: “She found all the different lines and levels,” he said, “And she and the orchestra did an exceptional job.”
Judging by the animated smiles on their faces, the audience obviously agreed.
The OSO celebrates the end of the 2012/13 season May 19, with its version of the Last Night of the Proms, based on British tradition peppered with Canadian humour. It features soprano Dawn Mussellam, with the Queen (or someone quite like her) in attendance.
Tickets for the OSO April 27 fund-raising tea at the Grand Hotel Kelowna are still available too.
— Christine Pilgrim is a freelance writer who regularly reviews concerts for The Morning Star.
