Concert review: ASO rewards packed Palace with solid performances
ALBANY — The Albany Symphony fielded 85 musicians on the Palace Theatre stage and performed before a full house Saturday night. Music director David Alan Miller led solid performances of two widely known classics and a fascinating east-meets-west violin concerto by returning composer Reena Esmail that featured Kala Ramnath, a current star in Indian music. It was a gratifying evening, robust but not overstuffed.
Part of the audience draw must have been Ravel’s “Bolero.” It has its fan base that Miller indulges about once every 10 years. The piece is typically the finale of the night, but on this occasion, it was the opener. Maybe the thought was to get it over and done with. The performance was clean and tight. Hearing it when our ears were still fresh didn’t prompt any fresh insights, except that it seemed to go by more quickly this way.
The ASO has performed music by Esmail six times over the last decade or so. Three of those were commissions and none have failed to please. The Concerto for Hindustani Violin is a collaboration with Ramnath, who created the ragas (scales) and taats (rhythmic patterns) that she uses for improvisation. Working from those same structures, Esmail wrote lush and expansive music for orchestra that frames and interacts with Ramnath.
A low platform was erected center stage allowing Ramnath and the masterful tabla player Abhijit Banerjee to perform while seated cross-legged. At times the orchestra and soloist seemed to be aligned but playing at different tempos. The colors and texture of the orchestra shifted and changed like passing clouds while the violin and tabla (which were amplified) moved at twice the speed. Banerjee’s virtuoso tabla playing added its own grounded punctuation.
Early on, the violin solo and the orchestral strings blended so well that it was tough to discern one from the other, and that could have been a deliberate message of kinship. With a presence that supersedes music, Ramnath wasn’t ever totally lost in the mix. She also sang in the last movement.
Listeners seated in the balcony probably had the best view of the mechanics of Indian violin technique. The music could have gone another 5 or 10 minutes with no complaints.
Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” ended the night with waltzes, marches, a tragic death and a witches’ sabbath, all wrapped together by an enduring love theme. Miller’s brief spoken introduction was almost as enjoyable as the music.
