By Daniel Buckwalter
Classical music fans got a taste of technical virtuosity and melodic grace over a weekend, and they responded with rousing ovations for the chamber ensemble microphilharmonic and soprano Siri Vik.
They were well deserved. In the dead of winter, this was much appreciated.
American Masters: Barber, Copland, Stravinsky and Floyd took audience members through works by these great American composers — giants, really — of the early and mid-20th century with flair and beauty.
Yes, you have to note that the Russian-born Igor Stravinsky was also a French citizen who became a U.S. citizen in 1945. He was a man of the world, so to speak, but for this occasion, Michael Anderson, microphilharmonic’s artistic director and clarinetest, decided to make him an American.
And it was after intermission — playing Stravinsky’s three-movement Dumbarton Oaks, Concerto in E-flat major, a salute to a historic house-museum built in 1799 in the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C. — where the American Masters program really took off.
The 15-member microphilharmonic played the first half of Dumbarton Oaks with elegant soulfulness. It has its dreamy aspects, and microphilharmonic nailed it as well as the energetic and dynamic third movement.
As much as this piece could have been the highlight of the concert, Vik then came out to sing Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, and the house teetered a little.
Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is a piece whose text comes from the poem of the same name by James Agee. The poem is a dreamlike account of an evening in the American South, told from a child’s innocent eyes and heart, but conveyed in the voice of an adult. The child is speaking tenderly about family on this evening and the harsh losses to come:
By some chance, here they are, all on this earth;
and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth…
After a little I am taken in and put to bed.
Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her:
and those receive me, who quietly treat me,
as one familiar and well-beloved in that home:
but will not, no, will not, not now, not ever;
but will not ever tell me who I am.
The adult makes the child seem older and wiser than his or her years, and Vik was in fine form — masterful — throughout the piece. It was one of the best performances I have heard her deliver.
But she and microphilharmonic were not quite done. Carlisle Floyd’s The Trees on the Mountain, from his 1955 opera Susannah, was a gorgeous ending to the concert. Throw in a little of Aaron Copland (As It Fell Upon a Day) and more Barber (Summer Music) at the start of the show, and the entire concert had a glow.
In the dead of winter, that’s all you can ask for — and it was much appreciated.
