Pianists Jessica and Michael Shinn played Double Rainbow.
A leaping dolphin and a light show in the sky inspired composer Thomas Cabaniss to write Double Rainbow — a concerto that had its world premiere at the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra’s season season closer on April 28.
Double Rainbow, a two-piano concerto, is in the line of Poulenc’s Two-Piano Concerto, if not actually modeled on it. The two pianists duel and dialogue mostly in fast figurations, leaving the orchestra to suggest any lyrical lines. Only in the last of the three movements does the orchestra begin to suggest the wonders of nature.
The soloists were the husband-and-wife team of Michael Shinn and Jessica Chow Shinn, Cabaniss’ faculty colleagues at the Juilliard School in New York City. Cabaniss, a native of South Carolina, was on hand to share in the cordial response of the audience. As an encore, the two soloists played a brief piano duet, Love Song, written by Cabaniss for his wife, showing the composer’s more expressive side.
Two very different works framed the concerto. The opening piece was Maurice Ravel’s suite, Le Tombeau de Couperin. A tombeau — “tomb” or “memorial” — was a French Baroque form of keyboard music to honor a deceased colleague. Originally for piano, this 1914 work was a tribute to friends who had died in World War I, which was raging at the time.
Adapted (selectively) for small orchestra by Ravel, this was an ideal piece for a chamber orchestra. Maestro Andrew Sewell led an incisive performance, showing off the delicious sounds of the WCO wind players.
In the second half, we heard the Symphony No. 2 of Robert Schumann. This score is usually part of the larger-orchestra repertoire, commanding a rich and full sonority. Tackling this is another example of Sewell’s ventures into that repertoire, challenging big orchestras at their own game. Fewer than 40 players were involved, and the 21 strings, however fine, were just too thin to sustain the balances against the burnished wind prominence.
Sewell’s approach was lean and brisk, with propulsive tempos that became really rushed in the scherzo movement. The slow movement, a virtual anthem of early Romanticism, was pretty but lacked depth of feeling. This was not a Romantic performance but a Classical one — Schumann as Haydn. Not convincing, but at least a stimulating experience.
