Pushing the envelope in masterpiece sweepstakes: ISO plays Mozart, Strauss, Beethoven, and Dennehy

 Matthew Halls' previous guest appearances with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra (covered on this blog since 2014) have indicated he brings plenty of charisma to the podium and a wealth of deep investment in displaying whatever the music most essentially reveals.

Matthew Halls has conducted the ISO several times in recent years.

It was no surprise, then, how revelatory his first full concert this time around turned out to be. He has the benefit of guiding an orchestra that's now capable of  extensive displays of youthful technique and coordinated energy.  On Friday night, there was sufficient evidence that the resumption of the Classical Series in the first two months of the new year is presenting an ensemble ready for the inspiration and guidance of its new music director, whoever that turns out to be.

The demanding program found the hearteningly large audience at Hilbert Circle Theatre vociferous in
approval. The guest soloist, Joyce Yang, held it spellbound in her performance of Mozart's greatest piano concerto and her deftly chosen encore, "Nocturne" from Edvard Grieg's Lyric Pieces.

She introduced the encore by noting how well the four-minute piece seems to suspend time. And the way she played it followed suit. To be sure, her entire manner with both Grieg and Mozart exemplified mastery of one of a pianist's most vexing, necessary tasks: counteracting the quick decay of each struck key by communicating an unerring sense of its connection to the next note and its links to others to build coherence. The weight and shape of every phrase she played showed a consciousness of context that resembled song.

Joyce Yang won the Van Cliburn competition's silver medal in 2005.

Time's immediate effect on sound, unless prolonged by such old technology as the sustaining pedal, lends poignancy to the piano — especially in slow, lyrical writing. The Larghetto movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto in C minor, K. 491, was enthralling. Chamber-music textures brought to the fore the ISO's marvelous current contingent of wind players in dialogue with the soloist. Yang's articulation was immaculate, and her use of the pedal properly restrained. 

The outer movements sparkled.  It's hard to overstate the impact of the first movement. One commentator justly notes that it "reaches heights of Sophoclean grandeur." Comparison to classic Greek tragedy didn't seem out of  place, the way Yang and Halls were of common mind about its meaning. In terms of fire and focus, her cadenza logically looked ahead to Beethoven, treating the theme motivically at first and ruminating productively even in the passage work.

The march characteristic of the finale was subtle to begin with, thanks to the evident rapport of orchestra and soloist. When the variations blazed forth all around, subtlety gave way to the stern business of martial vigor. The shift of meter to 6/8 was finely woven among piano and strings as the concerto ended grandly.

The concert opened magnificently with a performance of Richard Strauss' groundbreaking "Don Juan." Everything in this thickly scored tone poem was clearly defined here. The piece's manifold contrasts of mood flowed one to another in a full portrait of the passion-driven hero. The horns soared in the familiar bravura episodes, and the violin solos displayed concertmaster Kevin Lin's dependable mastery. 

The love theme given to solo oboe, touted by Halls in his "Words on Music" remarks, more than lived up to expectations in Jennifer Christen's ardent, billowing performance. Small wonder that right after the piece ended tenderly with the hero's death, Halls dashed off the podium directly into the orchestra to shake her hand and have her take a solo bow. I feel certain that the ISO's "Don Juan" Friday night was something any American orchestra would be proud of.

In the second half, a commissioned piece by the Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy got its world premiere. "Brink" was conceived as a tribute and response to Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 in F major, which followed. The new five-minute work (which had been due for a premiere in 2020) indeed takes the orchestra to the brink, with relentless rhythmic energy given prismatic exposure through shifts of color and texture.  

These are never indulged or prolonged, but the variety had to come through as more than din in the course of presenting "this gnarly beast" (Halls' description). The intense focus of "Brink," as though its pulsating strength can barely be contained, called to mind a much different work in which the composer steadily holds himself in so that self-imposed limitations remain absolute. That's "The Mysterious Barricades" by Francois Couperin, a 1717 harpsichord piece that generates excitement through its resolve to run headlong into prescribed limitations of range and expressive outreach.

There followed the piece to which "Brink" pays tribute: The  Beethoven Eighth privileges joy and a rare sense of humor that seems free of both irony and gruffness. The control Halls and the orchestra achieved never made the liveliness appear under too much constraint. The so-called minuet kicked up its heels in the manner of the country folk Beethoven depicted in his "Pastoral" Symphony (No. 6), which will be heard Feb. 17 and 18 in the ISO series. 

"Allegretto scherzando," the heading of the second movement, justified the fast tick-tock pace Halls chose, through which Beethoven poked a little fun at the metronome, at the time a new contraption. The call-and-response features, pitting strings against winds, were neatly brought off. Perhaps inevitably, given such a demanding program, there were slight signs of fatigue in the third and fourth movements. Nonetheless, the fitness of the ISO, seemingly for all tasks put before it, remains amazing.