ESO to close season with romantic repertoire

This weekend's concluding concerts of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra's 59th season are the fruit of typically creative programming by music director Robert Hanson.

Included are two of the most familiar pieces in the 19th century romantic repertoire, Jean Sibelius' "Finlandia" and Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor, joined by the amazing World War I-era Symphony No. 4 by Carl Nielsen. Thus, Finland, Norway and Denmark are represented in this tour through Scandinavia, long one of the world's creative bastions of classical music.

Pianist Terrence Wilson, New York-born and trained (the Juilliard School of Music) is this weekend's soloist for the only concerto composed during Grieg's long career (he wrote it when he was only 25). One of the "warhorses" of the romantic concerto repertoire, in Friday's weekend-opening concert Wilson gave Grieg's famous descending opening chords their proper dramatic emphasis, but then brought a total sense of serenity to the main lyric theme of the first movement as well as the middle-movement's adagio. Yet, Wilson kept plenty in reserve for the spirited finale, one of the most compact allegros in the romantic concerto repertoire. Wilson is a pianist of immense musical gifts who has appeared with many of the world's leading orchestras, and Elgin Symphony musicians and patrons are enriched by his presence here this weekend.

Following intermission, Hanson and the ESO turned to Nielsen's subtitled "Inextinguishable" Symphony, a work whose composition was begun in the weeks preceding World War I, and completed in 1916 during the height of that conflict, of which Denmark was a nearby neutral bystander. Still, Nielsen's emotions over the fate of Europe pour out of every note and phrase by his use of late-romantic style blended with occasional dissonance. Nowhere is this more evident in the finale's famous "timpani battle," in which sets of kettledrums on both sides of the stage offer dramatic percussive interplay in a majestic buildup to the symphony's blazing E-major climax. This weekend, Hanson is recognizing timpanists Robert Everson and Tina Laughlin with well-deserved solo bows, along with special kudos to the ESO brass and woodwind players.

Sibelius' brief symphonic poem ":Finlandia," which opened the concert, was played with virtuosity in its dramatic sections as well as the hymn-like main theme that has become Finland's unofficial second national anthem.

Elgin Symphony Orchestra

What: Robert Hanson conducts music by Jean Sibelius, Edvard Grieg and Carl Nielsen.

Guest soloist: pianist Terrence Wilson

Where: Hemmens Theatre, 45 Symphony Way, Elgin

When: 3:30 p.m. Sunday, June 14

Tickets: $25. Visit: elginsymphony.org.