Invitation to the dance: Officially, ISO's eighth music director is off to a brilliant start

Jun Märkl attends to detail and to the big picture. 

It's understandable that Jun Märkl's official debut as Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra music director has been marketed as "Jun Märkl Conducts Beethoven's 7th," but the firm indication that he is putting his stamp on the orchestra came first in Friday's night's concert with Manuel de Falla's "The Three-Cornered Hat."

Not to take anything away from how Symphony No. 7 in A major, op. 92, crowned the program, as expected. But to delay my commentary on that for a bit, it was stunning how Falla's ballet score presented the ISO as a virtuoso ensemble of unlimited potential under his guidance of the 65-year-old Japanese-German maestro. His popularity as a guest conductor over many years here had been well-established before he became music director designate a year ago.

Falla's complex setting of choreography, derived from a pantomime based on a Spanish novel, plays with cuckoldry, temptation, and mockery of officialdom before arriving at the final triumph of village solidarity. There's abundant detail of the story and the characters in a scenario the concert audience can only read about and is tasked with remembering as it unfolds. But to attentive ears it all fell into place Friday on a vast canvas saturated with musical genre painting and rich characterization. 

A plain-featured miller, the miller's attractive wife, and a visiting magistrate (corregidor) of conventional pomposity make up this particular version of the eternal triangle. It's holiday time in the village, but the general celebration is interrupted by the confused interaction of the three principals. The large orchestra is characterized by a wealth of percussion, a variety of first-chair solos, and a kaleidoscopic range of ensemble textures. There are also a couple of mezzo-soprano solos that represent the woman's divided loyalties. Veronica Siebert, a master's degree candidate at Indiana University, handled her turn in the spotlight with gusto and radiance.

Otherwise, this weekend's program (to be repeated at 5:30 p.m. today at Hilbert Circle Theatre) was a showcase for the orchestra. Checking the page listing ISO members reveals an abundance of musicians under temporary contract or with "acting" in front of their titles. Only that indication of volatility hints that the ISO still needs to move into its next stage of sustainable glory. Not since Raymond Leppard has an ISO music director had the opportunity to put his artistic stamp on the ensemble, though Mario Venzago's efforts to to do so, cut off by contract squabbles, deserve honorable mention. Märkl's signature is poised to be inscribed on ISO history in time for its centennial observances in 2030.

Märkl has the orchestra seated using risers to put players on several levels. The section arrangement in front goes left to right like this: first violins, cellos, violas, and second violins. Force of habit is strong, however: When the conductor wanted to congratulate string section principals individually at the end, for a moment he turned to where Ju-Fang Liu and her double-bass colleagues were not, before correcting himself. Clarity and dialogue elements in the Beethoven and Falla pieces were highlighted well by this set-up.

Speaking of principals, one first-chair salute was predictable. D. Kern Holoman, in his excellent essay on "The Three-Cornerd Hat" in "Evenings With the Orchestra," concludes with this one-sentence paragraph: "The first bassoon player, who portrays the wily corregidor instrumentally, should get a solo bow." And so Ivy Ringel did, deservedly. She was "in character" from her first solo on. Märkl was generous with his other acknowledgments, but I will confine mentions here to two of them: the astonishing, first-among-equals playing of timpanist Jack Brennan and English-horn specialist Roger Roe. His instrument is properly a tenor oboe, but the plangent earthiness of Roe's tone, quite fitting in context, turned the cor anglais into a distinctive lone wolf among the winds. 

Handclaps and foot stomps brought the orchestra into theatrical splendor in the Falla Prelude. Turning to their customary duties, the players were thoroughly responsive to every change of color and intensity. And their rhythmic savvy was precise and well-sustained. 

"The Three-Cornered Hat" carries the torch among other 20th-century masterpieces when it comes to bringing rhythm to the fore as an essential building block of music, along with harmony and melody. Märkl's pinpoint direction brought out the ISO's alertness in adjusting to the score's rhythmic variety without allowing the pulse to become chunky or disjointed.

The program's emphasis on the dance was wonderfully displayed by the three pieces Märkl chose for his official debut. Johann Strauss Jr.'s "Emperor Waltzes" are the curtain-raiser, the work's melodic variety wedded to charming tempo changes. The rhythmic acuity imparted to the orchestra from the podium was especially delightful in a waltz strain loaded with plunging phrases that appeared to bounce up again and again, functioning as a musical trampoline.  (On the lyrical side, Märkl acknowledged two short, heart-melting solos by principal cellist Austin Huntington at the end.)

The oft-quoted description about Beethoven's 7th being "the apotheosis of the dance" (Richard Wagner was insightful about others' music when his antisemitism wasn't triggered) could well be dusted off when the symphony is compared with "The Three-Cornered Hat." That's because the latter puts the dance on solid ground among hard-working, hard-playing villagers, whereas Beethoven's symphony indeed seems to give god-like stature to a perennially popular form of physical movement.

The initial chords in the first-movement introduction were robust enough to signal the manic activity to come, when the main theme gallops apace. In the second movement, the ISO winds in the second theme were suavely regulated for contrast with the main material. The popularity of that Allegretto from its first performances onward could be understood in terms of the details Beethoven attached to its simple appeal. Such details were a feature of Friday's performance worth cherishing, as were the swelling phrases by which the ISO winds made the third-movement trio quite expressive. 

The finale, sweeping everything before it, was of a piece, checking too transcendental an

interpretation of what Wagner meant by "apotheosis." While the whiplash energy remained in control Friday night, there was still a heartening sense of abandon that suggests less the technical aplomb of a ballerina embodying heavenly grace than the kind of dancing William Carlos Williams celebrates in his poem about Brueghel's painting ""The Kermess," which ends: 

Kicking and rolling

about the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those

shanks must be sound to bear up under such

rollicking measures, prance as they dance

in Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess.

A far cry from a godly manifestation, perhaps, but suitable to the magnificent reach of Beethoven's 7th and the way it was performed here Friday under the ISO's new maestro.