The title of Madison Symphony Orchestra’s opening weekend, “Orchestra Brilliance,” is silly, of course — they’re always brilliant, right? It refers to conductor John DeMain’s practice of using the first program of the season to highlight the orchestra itself, and its many fine players — without putting the focus on a guest soloist.
Overall, the program will, I think, be remembered as one of MSO’s finest. However, the unfortunate choice for an opener is a dated transformation of Bach’s celebrated Toccata and Fugue in D minor for organ, which Leopold Stokowski turned into an orchestral extravaganza. Bach composed counterpoint, while Stokowski writes Hollywood. (You may recall it was popularized in Disney’s movie Fantasia.) Contrapuntal lines are broken up to show off different instruments and choirs, ending in the purest bombast. And Maestro DeMain milks it all for the utmost orchestral color.
Next up is Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5, the unjustly neglected “Reformation Symphony.” Here it serves as early recognition of the 500th anniversary this year (actually on Oct. 30) of Martin Luther’s launching of his protest movement in 1517. Mendelssohn’s symphony was instead composed to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the establishment of the Lutheran catechism, the Augsburg Confession, in 1530. It is typical Mendelssohnian conservative Romanticism, in four movements, with the first and last in proper sonata form. But three quotations of the so-called “Dresden Amen” (later used by Wagner in Parsifal) in the first movement, and the ultimately triumphant working out of Luther’s famous chorale, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (“A Mighty Fortress is Our God”), peg it clearly to the Lutheranism to which the composer became devoted.
Some Stokowskian grandeur carries over into DeMain’s conducting of Mendelssohn, as he draws out flexible phrasing and rubato, in a superb performance.
We rarely hear Hector Berlioz’s Harold in Italy, which uses the poetry of Lord Byron as inspiration for what is not a “viola concerto,” but a symphony “with viola obligato.” The solo part evokes not only Byron’s poetic version of Childe Harold’s experiences in Italy but the composer’s own.
The MSO soloist is the orchestra’s first-desk violist, Chris Dozoryst. He is a fine and sensitive musician, but his tone is disappointingly weak in standing up to the orchestra. Nevertheless, DeMain mustered wonderful orchestral playing, exploiting the range of Berliozian colors from the delicate to the rowdy. I particularly love the melodiousness he brings out in the two lovely middle movements.
The program is repeated September 16 at 8 p.m. and Sept. 17 at 2:30 p.m.
