"Symphony For

A Song"

Concert reviews

 

 

South Bend Symphony delivers joyous sounds of season

 

By JACK WALTON
Tribune Correspondent

There's nothing quite like a jolt of symphonic power and choral beauty to reinvigorate familiar Christmas songs. Sunday afternoon at the Morris Performing Arts Center, Maestro Tsung Yeh directed the South Bend Symphony Orchestra's "Home for the Holidays" concert, and delivered to the audience plenty of both.

Special guests helped lift the show to a high celebratory level, and the first of them was the combined force of the handbell choirs of the Sunnyside Presbyterian and First Presbyterian churches. They performed, of course, "The Carol of the Bells." It was a joy to hear the lovely polyphony of the piece in full arrangement, especially after enduring it so frequently bastardized in commercials, robbed of its unique character.

Another guest later in the first half of the show was the concert's most delightful performer: Soprano Ollie Watts Davis brought a rare combination of operatic grandeur and rural soul to a series of songs ranging from Mozart and Schubert to Negro spirituals. She was spellbinding, as authoritative on the Austrian composers' works as she was compelling on the African-American traditionals.

Dr. Davis has performed all over the country, recorded albums, authored books and taught classes, and she gave Sunday's crowd an education in how to sing Christmas songs with grace, style, virtuosity and spiritual commitment. It was truly a perfect holiday recital: sweet, touching, pious and still fun.

The very impressive Penn High School Symphonic Choir — well over 100 singers — joined Davis and the SBSO for Davis' final four songs, and functioned with the precision of veterans. The choir also provided the finest highlight of the second half of the program, Jeffrey Biegel's "Christmas in a Minute," a clever vocal arrangement of Chopin's "Minute Waltz" that was both humorous and technically dazzling.

Surprisingly, the Penn High School Chamber Choir, consisting of some of the stalwarts of the larger ensemble, was sloppy and silly in its two features, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and "Mistletoe." Those numbers were the type of thing best left in high school auditoriums, and not worthy of a concert hall — an act only a parent or grandparent could enjoy.

The lengthy "Carol Cantata No.1," a medley of familiar songs, was pleasant if unremarkable, and allowed plenty of time for the audience to take in Phil Patnaude's scenery design. Along with the usual garlands and flowers, there was also a light show that projected images above and behind the performers, and the scenes were appropriate and unobtrusive. It was a nice touch that will be welcome in future programs.

An obligatory singalong and the always irresistible "Hallelujah Chorus" ended the show, with Davis returning to front the SBSO in Handel's song of praise. It was fitting that she could be at Yeh's side for the final applause. They both earned every huzzah they got from the appreciative crowd.

Orchestra gives

dynamic performance

ANDREW S. HUGHES
Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND -- An animated Maestro Tsung Yeh led the South Bend Symphony Orchestra through a dynamic performance Thursday night at the Morris Performing Arts Center.

The string section came on strong for the opening of the concert's first work, Johannes Brahms' "Tragic" Overture, Opus 81, and the playing became only more powerful as other sections of the orchestra entered. A plaintive oboe, the tip-toe of the strings played pizzicato, stiff bowing by the violins and a flute line that cut clearly through the aggressive playing of the strings all made for highlights of the performance and gave it a shifting sense of mood.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Concerto for Flute & Harp, K. 299, began with a bright, vigorous opening that gave way to the first of many fluid, airy melodic lines performed by soloist Leslie Short, the orchestra's principal flutist.

Short's flute and guest soloist Alison Attar's harp mixed well throughout the performance to produce an interesting contrast in sonic textures -- plucked vs. blown. Attar's tapping of her left palm against the harp's strings carried through the auditorium and added another pleasurable -- and harmonic -- texture to the sound.

The lush playing of the strings and gentle playing of the soloists gave the second movement a pastoral feel, while a series of descending notes by Attar stood out for their liveliness and punch.
ections of the orchestra, whose playing contained both muscle and grace.

Parts of the second movement sounded playful, and the woodwinds produced a rich, wonderful tone during two unison passages for their instruments.

The third movement's tempo and intensity built subtly, the brass powerful but not overwhelming. A propulsive tempo combined with Yeh's authoritative gestures in reining in the orchestra for two false conclusions and the work's true finale made the fourth movement dramatic and thrilling.

South Bend Tribune

Sun., Nov. 11, 2007