ESO a 'better' orchestra after 58th season
The Elgin Symphony Orchestra's just-concluded 58th season was one to remember on several fronts.
The orchestra continued to build its legacy through steady artistic and audience growth, along with last month's release of its first commercial recording, an all-Aaron Copland CD on Naxos International's "American Classics" series.
As Music Director Robert Hanson proudly said, the recording not only will widen the ESO's national profile, but the unique pressure involved with major recording sessions "makes the orchestra better."
And the final Classic Series concerts of June 13-15 proved it. Hanson conducted Gustav Mahler's challenging Fifth Symphony in performances for which he and the ESO musicians have every right to be proud. The Mahler work was a fitting climax to the season, from Ross Beacraft's trumpet fanfare introducing the opening funeral-march movement to Greg Flint's French horn solo in the third movement. At the conclusion of the 70-minute symphony's exhilarating finale, Beacraft and Flint were accorded solo bows by Hanson, who then did likewise for the entire orchestra, section by section.
Hanson, always the creative programmer, opened the concert with a brief Mozart serenade for strings, performed in baroque style (without a conductor), with concertmaster Isabella Lippi leading her colleagues as part of a concertino quartet standing at the front of the stage. It was fascinating to hear this intimate Mozart piece mirroring the structure of the huge Mahler symphony to follow, both works opening with a funeral march and ending with a rondo-finale.
Other major season highlights:
The annual "American Icon Festival" in early May included definitive performances by French pianist Pascal Roge of George Gershwin's Concerto in F, along with Concerto in G by Maurice Ravel, whose visit in the 1920s with Gershwin to New York's Harlem jazz clubs had a profound influence on the renowned French composer.
Guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero led an early-February program that included American composer Howard Hanson's Second ("Romantic") Symphony and Camille Saint-Saëns' "Organ" Symphony, the latter proving a modern digital organ can stand in nicely for the romantic pipe organ for which the piece was written in 1878.
The Elgin Choral Union stood out in a midseason all-Russian program that included Leopold Stokowski's "symphonic synthesis" of Modest Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov" (including Hanson's additional editing) and the Polovtsian Dances from Alexander Borodin's opera "Prince Igor."
Elizabeth Blumenstock, one of the world's leading baroque violinists, in early January performed a Vivaldi concerto and collaborated in other early period works. ESO Associate Conductor Stephen Squires closed the concert with a bracing performance of Beethoven's ever-popular Fifth Symphony.
And, of course, violinist Itzhak Perlman made his second visit to the ESO for last fall's opening gala concert.
Behind the scenes, longtime executive director Michael Pastreich, who led the ESO to an unprecedented period of growth, left to work his fiscal magic at The Florida Orchestra in Tampa-St. Petersburg. The ESO's national search resulted in the appointment this spring of Dale J. Lonis, who will officially begin his duties as CEO next week.
Next, it's on to the 59th season, which will open with the gala concert Sept. 20, when "Mr. Spock" (Leonard Nimoy) narrates a multimedia presentation of Gustav Holst's "The Planets."