CLASSICAL
Tulsa Symphony Orchestra
The concert, presented at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, was titled "A Magical Evening," and was filled with some of music's most famous examples of aural fantasy.
When guest conductor Daniel Hege returned to the podium as the crowd that nearly filled the Chapman Music Hall remained on its feet, he signaled the question, "One more?" Then he turned to the orchestra, which launched into Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries."
Of course, like any good magic trick these days, it was a moment carefully planned -- one doesn't just call out a tune to an orchestra and expect all 70 or so musicians to know exactly what parts they are to play. Still, it had the illusion of spontaneity, so that one could take it not as a trick but as the treat it was intended to be.
As for the rest of the evening, there were more than a few magical moments in this program, although it took a while for them to appear.
In fact, it wasn't until the final piece of the evening's first half, Dukas' "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," that the Tulsa Symphony seemed to come to life and play with the energy and passion we've heard in the past.
Few people today can hear Dukas' piece without visions of Mickey Mouse and animated brooms, thanks to the film "Fantasia." But under Hege's direction, the Tulsa Symphony gave this work the right sort of wild playfulness it needs.
The 1919 "Firebird Suite" by Stravinsky was maybe the best thing of the evening -- the quieter first portion of the suite a nice mix of gentleness and tension; the "Danse infernale" a lusty, Satanic roar; the "Berceuse" sweetened by a series of plaintive bassoon solos; and the finale building into an epic thunder.
The last two movements of Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique" concluded the evening. Hege laid out the story of this music -- even drawing a dramatic finger across his throat at the point in the fourth movement when the main character dreams of a guillotine blade coming down on his neck, in case anyone missed the moment.
But the orchestra ably brought out all the theatrics in the music itself: the inexorability of the "March to the Scaffold," the swirling raucousness of the "Witches' Sabbath."
The performance of Saint-Saens' "Danse Macabre," on the other hand, was remarkably tame for something that's supposed to be the devil fiddling the dead out of their graves on Halloween. Concertmaster Rossitza Goza played the violin solo well, but the piece as a whole never quite caught fire.
That was also true of the two "fire-theme" pieces on the program, de Falla's "Ritual Fire Dance" and the "Magic Fire Music," another excerpt from Wagner's "Die Walkure." Nicely groomed, with all the notes in place -- just not exciting.
Hege and the orchestra began the evening with John Williams' "Harry's Wondrous World," from his score to the first "Harry Potter" movie. It reminded how Williams' film music has become the sound of American fantasy, since this piece echoed previous work for such spectacles of the imagination as "Star Wars," "E.T." and "Superman."
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© Copyright 2007, TULSA WORLD, OKLA.
