Sedona Symphony Artistic Director Janna Hymes was back on the podium for the Symphony’s second concert of the season and the last before its holiday hiatus, and, in the spirit of artistic collaboration, was joined by her Chamber Music Sedona counterpart, Nick Canellakis, as the afternoon’s featured and very intimate soloist.
Hymes and the Symphony led off with the overture from Ludwig van Beethoven’s incidental music for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play “Egmont” about a Netherlandish revolutionary. There are those who are apt to charge Beethoven, for their own peculiar reasons or merely as a result of their self-projection, with writing angsty music. Not so. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s late works, to be sure, are full of trivial teenage angst, but Beethoven’s orchestral approach, while incorporating striving and soulsearching, always ends in the triumph of human will and reason over petty negative emotion. That model was obvious in the Symphony’s solid rendition of the “Egmont” overture, which began soberly with well-shaped, distinct phrases before erupting into confident resolution energetically led by Hymes. The Symphony produced a surprisingly dark, rich tone of great power with well-balanced brass work for the occasion, in distinct contrast to the sound it would develop during the second half of the concert. It is sometimes possible to forget just how good the coda of this overture is, but the Symphony reminded listeners of the fact with a few vigorous thrusts and Hymes’ nicely-delineated sforzandos.
Then came the cello — specifically a vintage Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume cello in the hands of Canellakis, who joined the Symphony to perform Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Variations on a Rococo Theme.” The variations tiptoed onto the stage with a tremulous, almost virginal opening — though Canellakis was obviously no virgin, as he was shortly to make clear — into which an offstage horn intruded, heralding the arrival of the soloist. The first few variations were graceful, elegant, balletic, with opportunities for Canellakis to display his expressive use of vibrato and rubato and some flute-cello interplay. Then, of course, a melancholy mood developed, during which Canellakis dropped into a state of coital passion with his instrument, aided and abetted by the flutes again, with whose help he gradually worked back into a sunnier state of mind. Next there was a threat of a relapse, from which he was rescued by the strings to end the passage on an incredibly delicate fairy note like the ones that had introduced the variations.
This brought us, as Danny Kaye would say, to the fourth variation, where Canellakis got to do some flashy fingering in the intervals of being all elegant again, playing notes that struck the listener like pine trees shivering in a November breeze on the Mogollon Rim. Variation five was both savage and contemplative, while variation six had the cello sorrowing over a gentle pizzicato from the orchestra. It was quite a showcase for an immersive player like Canellakis, who squeezes the music muscularly from between his thighs. The last variation was merry and blazing with absolutely no warning, a dizzying romp for the soloist and some fun for the ensemble as well. Apparently the little death didn’t quite take.
Canellakis commented after the climax that he hates playing encores alone, and so brought the orchestra along with him for a short venture through the Bohemian forest, “Silent Woods,” one of Antonin Dvorak’s adaptations of one of his piano suites. It started intimately with the violins silent, just the cello yearning over the pulse of the low strings, before shifting into a bolder, yet still tender, mood and returning to the main theme. Again the offstage horn called, in a moving solo passage right before the conclusion.
For the afternoon’s symphonic selection, Hymes had opted for Georges Bizet’s Symphony in C Major, a choice that was at once exciting and colorful, uncomplicated, and welladapted to the particular qualities of the Sedona Symphony’s string sections. The Symphony in C is a symphony in lush tropical colors, and their playing captured that quality. Like Franz Schubert’s First Symphony, it contains almost too much joy to fit on the page. In anticipation of what was to come, the oboes spoke out prominently above the rest of the ensemble, while the violins may have made a few of the passages slightly too pointed at times, like icicles rather than fir needles. The bumptious energy of the first movement, however, multiplied by the extra horn, drew enthusiastic first-movement applause from the audience, which irruption was swiftly followed by someone’s cell phone ringing exactly as Hymes was about to give the downbeat for the second movement. She graciously refrained from pulling a Thomas Beecham move by turning around and commenting, “Ladies and gentlemen, I deeply regret to say that we have not yet come to the end of this piece.”
After the audience finally settled itself, the Symphony embarked on a rendering of the andante that emphasized the exploratory uncertainly of the woodwinds, with some very Levantine-feeling oboe work. The violins spoke out with smoothness and enthusiasm combined, soaring up to a mid-movement resolution. The listener gets the sense in this movement that the composer was trying to be serious and not succeeding especially well. It is simply too enjoyable a work, and one to which the performance did credit.
The third movement involved some interesting interpretive choices. The orchestra played with verve and power, giving this most exciting part of the symphony the playfulness that it requires. At the same time, Hymes’ tempo was a trifle uneven throughout, but she also brought out some of the writing for the horns that can disappear in this passage, with the violins doing justice to the anticipatory undertones and a dark bite coming from the basses and cellos. She also took all of the repeats in the third movement, which are sometimes omitted. In the fourth movement, however, she opted not to take the exposition repeat, a la Bernard Haitink, and to take the tempo up as well, maintaining the symphony’s overall exuberance. The result was a rambunctious rout that amplified the enthusiasm of Bizet’s writing, the strings and the winds chasing after one another and kicking the melodies back and forth, without ever losing the bright sound they achieved.
The Sedona Symphony will return to the Sedona Performing Arts Center on Feb. 2, featuring violin soloist Tai Murray in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5, which will be followed by Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2.
