Kleinhans Music Hall was quite full last night when JoAnn Falletta conducted a varied concert and I hope the large crowd was because some people were new to the classical concert scene. It was the kind of concert that you always hope will be someone’s “first love.” There was something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue and it all began with something bittersweet.
BPO President and Executive Director Dan Hart came on stage along with Music Director JoAnn Falletta for a heartfelt announcement that after over 40 years, stagehand Charlie Gill was going to retire. The onstage orchestra responded with an outpouring of love and respect for the man who has made their professional lives possible by always being there for them, onstage, backstage, and even overseas. As Falletta said “Thank you, Charlie, for keeping us safe.”
Of course, Charlie wasn’t done just yet. Because this concert required more than the usual rearranging of instruments. As the evening progressed, the orchestra got smaller… and smaller.
The concert started (and will start this Sunday, June 4 at 2:30) with a work that the BPO is recording, “Festival Music” by African-American composer Adolphus (“Dolph” as Falletta calls him) Hailstork. Reading the liner notes, it was inspired by a trip to Guyana, where Hailstork heard African rhythms and African drums. Indeed the percussion section was expansive, with four percussionists with some unusual instruments and one tympanist, not counting the piano (technically a percussion instrument). A celeste was next to the piano, and behind it was a synth keyboard creating a steel drum part. All through the piece were these little explosions of new sounds. And every once in a while we got a little blues riff.
To me, though, it sounded quite Mexican, so if you like the driving relentlessly forward-moving music of Revueltas, or Moncayo, or Márquez, all of which the BPO has performed over the years, I know you will like Hailstork’s “Festival Music.”
Then came the moving of the chairs and the exit of the percussionists and other musicians including all the brass except for a trumpeter because it was time for the return to Kleinhans of pianist Norman Krieger and the gorgeous Piano Concerto No. 4, to me, his most intimate concerto. Sure, I love the bombastic Beethoven of concertos 3 and 5 (“The Emperor”) but there’s something so emotional about No. 4 that gets me every time.
The thought I had listening was that I was with my grandfather (who used to take me to Kleinhans). I know that in our youth-obsessed culture, that might sound like a diss, but I felt when Krieger played that I was with someone, like my grandfather, who could do anything and do it well. (One of my German grandfather’s favorite expressions was “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”) There was no flash, no “look at me!” that you get from younger pianists. In fact, Krieger even had the music in front of him. It was just perfect.
After multiple curtain calls, the audience got an encore, a Chopin Etude. Then intermission and the removal of even more chairs, so that when we came back it was a tiny orchestra of only 38 people, “all soloists” as Falletta told us from the stage. That’s a Falletta thing. She loves to program music where her musicians get to strut their stuff, and that was the case for the final work, the Suite (from the incidental music to) Le bourgeois gentilhomme by late 19th, early 20th-century composer Richard Strauss.
When you go you can read the excellent (as always) program notes by Chaz Stuart and Falletta also explains the story from the stage, but this is quintessential Strauss, blending combinations of instruments, and giving each a little moment in the sun. In a way, it was a perfect bookend to the Hailstork piece, which also moved the music all around the orchestra.
So we got something old (the venerable Beethoven), something new Hailstork’s “Festival Music,” something borrowed (Strauss quotes from his inspiration, Lully’s 1670 version of Le bourgeois gentilhomme) and something blue, or at least bluesy, those riffs in the Hailstork piece.
Runtime: 2 hours 15 minutes
Kleinhans Music Hall is at “3 Symphony Circle” Buffalo, 14201 where Porter Avenue, Richmond Avenue, North Street and Wadsworth meet at a traffic circle. Visit www.bpo.org or call 716-885-5000. Full-service bar in the lobby or across the lobby in the Mary Seaton Room. Masks are optional.
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