Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra opener includes concerto appearance by APA competition winner

 The Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra opened its 2022-23 season Saturday with a work by an African-

Kenny Broberg forged a clear path through Schumann.

American composer. Let me make clear at the start that I think the diversity push in American classical music is a positive thing, and not because the evidence is great that a lot of masterpieces are being uncovered or more widely exposed as a result. Jessie Montgomery's "Banner" does not seem to be in that class.

Unfamiliar music should be publicly aired if the artists — and, in the case of orchestras, conductors — really believe in it and can get their assisting musicians  to perform it as if they did too. Listeners should expect that some questions about choices, and even a few duds, will emerge. If you scan orchestra histories and program books, you'll find many pieces that faded into dusty neglect, and perhaps never had a place in what is taken as the standard repertoire. That doesn't mean they didn't deserve an outing in the first (or second, or third, etc.) place.

So of course any indication that "classical music," a term forever linked to creative work placed on a pedestal, has in fact had contributions by black composers is to be celebrated.  "Banner" seems to have incorporated the composers' mixed feelings about our national anthem and the challenge implicitly posed against it by what was once known as "the Negro national anthem": "Lift Every Voice and Sing." 

Jessie Montgomery: "Banner" worth hearing once.

It carries out Montgomery's reflections on that challenge, translated into orchestral terms. I found "Banner" kind of a messy way to embody the composer's feelings. It worked as a vehicle for doing so, but it was so free with dissonance and deliberate confusion that it made little impact musically on me. 

I will leave it to stew in its own juices here, but not before commending Matthew Kraemer for programming music he evidently believes in. All musicians responsible for creating concerts of merit, artistic engagement, and public interest should do so. Not everything played with commitment once or twice needs to be imperishable.

Familiar music formed the bulk of the program at Butler University's Schrott Center for the Arts. The centerpiece was Schumann's Piano Concerto in A major, with Kenny Broberg in the solo role. Broberg won the top prize in the 2021 American Pianists Awards, making his mark particularly in music by Alexander Scriabin, a flamboyant Russian whom many listeners find chillingly (paradoxically)  repellent. 

He was thus notably responsive to the flamboyant side of Schumann, embodied in one of two personas the German composer created to express his divided nature. The "Florestan" part of Broberg's artistry was especially pronounced in the first movement, and the accompaniment that Kraemer drew from the orchestra followed suit. The "Intermezzo" that serves as the work's compact slow movement seemed to blend elements of the two personalities, the other being the calming, steadily focused "Eusebius." Dramatically linked to the finale, the middle movement recalls the way Beethoven bonded vigorous finales to their more thoughtful predecessors in the Violin Concerto and the Fifth Symphony.

The way the ICO and Broberg played the finale was persuasive, even though it may have discarded or transformed Schumann's characteristic blend of personalities into a Beethoven style of no-nonsense assertion. Such an interpretation worked well, and it certainly put Broberg's personal stamp on a familiar masterpiece.

What didn't work quite as well for me was his use of the printed score and the consequent need of a page turner. I detected little rehearsal preparation of the two figures at the piano, but the performance was not seriously disturbed. Though it's not a requirement, memorization of standard concerto repertoire is the norm. 

The only time I've seen an exception was long ago at the Ravinia Festival, when Alfred Brendel essayed the Schoenberg concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. I didn't know the piece at all then, so I can't vouch for how secure the pianist's performance was, but his face certainly looked anxious, in Brendel's scholarly manner, throughout. And of course, the Schoenberg concerto is not standard repertoire, so who could blame the Austrian pianist for needing the score?

Broberg certainly played as if he knew his piece well. The performance was both technically and interpretively shipshape. First oboist Leonid Sirotkin deserved the solo bow Kraemer signaled him to take at the end.

Passing over Hugo Wolf's "Italian Serenade," an attractive late-romantic milestone that in this performance had a few coordination problems between the viola soloist and the ensemble, I'll turn to the concert's other familiar piece, Felix Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony, No. 4 in A major. 

The orchestra interestingly seemed less comfortable with the fast music of the first movement than with the faster music of the finale, which was splendidly played. The middle movements had their charms, though the evocation of religious processions in the second could have been a touch more somber. Mendelssohn's thoroughly acquired Protestant sensibility influenced his cool response to Catholic pageantry.

In this work generally, the north German composer of supreme self-control and facility reacted to his transalpine experience in the effusive Italian capital with warmth and gratitude. The result has been celebrated by orchestras and audiences ever since. But to reiterate my first point, it's not essential to have certifiable masterpieces only in concert programs today, contrasted with a commissioned premiere now and then. Music that may sooner or later waft away into distant memories also deserves a place, whether it carries the banner of diversity or not.