ISO parade: Childhood memory, concertmaster showcase, excitable Tchaikovsky

Back when I was a wee lad, almost beyond recoverable memory (though I was allowed to put those heavy early LPs on my parents' turntable by myself), just about the most exciting music I knew was a brief moment in Bedrich Smetana's "cycle of symphonic poems" titled Ma Vlast (My Country).

The symphonic poem in question was of course "Vltava," the Czech composer's evocation of his homeland river that's best known by its German name, the Moldau. The moment was the episode where the river is depicted gaining rapidity and becoming a torrent as it flows (geographically, at the St. John Rapids). The crucial capping of that depiction is a repeated five-note piccolo phrase, riding the crest of the turmoil underneath.

In the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's performance of "The Moldau" Friday night, that moment thrilled again, as I knew it would, and with the greater context it has long had for me in one of the symphonic repertoire's most captivating sonic pictures. 

That piccolo! I think I started sensing then what marvelous touches classical composers put on their creations. Even in abstract music that doesn't encourage the mind to call up images, so often we have the response: "How did he think of that? It's perfect!" From there, if we're listening well, we hear such marvels of detail blending into an entire conception, even if we're innocent of music theory, from the first note on, in everything we listen to. Of course, there are the pieces that don't engage us, and there we find precious few marvels, or none. But  in music there are always lots of miracles to be newly astonished by, as ISO principal librarian James Norman zestfully points out in the latest intermission video.

Kevin Lin touched the heartstrings.

Matthias Pintscher is this weekend's guest conductor, and he gave every indication Friday evening that he finds "The Moldau" more than a borderline staple of the "symphonic pops" repertoire. The performance rose to an inspirational level worthy of the piece. The suspense lent to the diminuendo near the end, for example, was everything it should be, conveying the calming of the river at the end of its adventurous journey, which includes glimpses of the life onshore as well as its associations with patriotic glory.

Water played a more distressing role in ISO history earlier this week. In his usual CEO welcome speech James Johnson told of a water-main burst that required the best efforts of symphony staff and some musicians in moving valuable instruments and other equipment to dry safety. The line-up of white double-bass cases along the rear of the stage  provided a visual reminder of that unwelcome episode.

The tradition of an annual concerto showcase for the ISO concertmaster is always worth anticipating. This iteration rewarded the anticipation splendidly. Kevin Lin's performance of Camille Saint-Saens' Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor was repeated this afternoon along with the rest of Friday's program. His performance with his colleagues seemed to speak to the high regard in which he is held. 

He attracted respect immediately with his stormy presentation of the stern, no-nonsense opening of the concerto. But he made a particularly indelible impression with the naturalness of the piece's abundance of sweetness, centered by the composer on the solo instrument. 

Saint-Saens showed his mastery so early in his native France that  Hector Berlioz quipped of him: "This young man knows everything, but he lacks inexperience."

On top of his formidable learning and know-how, what Saint-Saens occasionally had access to was an imitation of inexperience that can be most winning. There's a childlike charm in the second movement of this concerto, for example. It sports a theme that is so light it could never be taken as profound, but Lin and the orchestra shaped an insightful performance of it. 

It ends with a kind of tart sweetness that almost seems otherworldly, the violin's poised harmonics set against the clarinet. This ending, and much of what precedes it, makes the odd suggestion to me of an appropriate  choice of exit music from this world. There's a spirituality to it that never undercuts or overloads its charm. It holds onto life and lets go of it at the same time. When you want the religious side of this feeling, you go to the Fauré Requiem.

Friday night the Saint-Saens was all given stature. In the finale, the variety of Lin's sound and articulation was matched by the versatility of the orchestra. Notably, the brass seemed to salute the soloist with their sturdy chorale episode. The mutual admiration of soloist and orchestra during the ovation struck me as remarkably genuine.

After intermission came the least lachrymose but most explicitly fate-darkened of Tchaikovsky's three late symphonies,  the fourth in F minor, op. 36. The first movement was rhythmically astute at every turn; the second went from Jennifer Christen's limpid oboe solo through the cellos' tender version of it through airy textures out of which short wind solos sprang up, then faded, like daffodils. 

The dynamic variety of the thoroughly adept string pizzicatos in the third movement sounded extraordinary under Pintscher's guidance. The finale, which ends in heaven-storming cymbal crashes and a lot of the composer's most effusive full-orchestra writing, can always be accused of overstating the obvious, but in live performance it tends to catch you up in its emotional excess and sheer gusto. And so it did Friday night.