In ICO concert, two works by living composers of color sit cheek by jowl with Beethoven's violin concerto

A new work commissioned for the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra carries a heavy load of extramusical meaning that it managed to approach on its own terms through a range of color and expressivity in its premiere performance Saturday night at the Schrott Center.

Jorge Muñiz's "Solidarity Symphony" declares its bias in its very title, and through slide projections supplements its musical message visually. With accompanying photos, the words of black poets Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Langston Hughes were read in recording as the texts were exhibited.

Jorge Muñiz's hope for a better world shines through. 

This meant that the import of Muñiz's score was unmistakable, especially as a universal message against racial division and other kinds of oppression and in favor of removing all barriers to human solidarity. The support of such a work by Classical Music Indy must clearly be a boon to its community profile here.

The score is for string orchestra, including well-designed advantages of color, rhythm, and harmony from timpani, mallet instruments, and piano. Moreover, a crucial element of meaning is conveyed by solo cello at the start. That role was commendably undertaken at the premiere by principal Marjorie Lange Hanna. Matthew Kraemer conducted with revelatory commitment to the piece. 

Composers of color were certainly a selling point for the event and substantiated its title, "Joyful Solidarity." The concert opened with Iubilo, a tidy fanfare for full chamber orchestra by Brian Raphael Nabors. It lived up to the program-note description of the "frenzy" it works up toward, though the frenzy of jubilation the title promises was evident from the start.

Sirena Huang in performance Saturday.

It was a pleasure to hear Sirena Huang, gold medalist in the 2022 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, once again. Displaying the suave command of style and technique that earned her the top prize, she played Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major  with sympathetic accompaniment by Kraemer and the ICO.

Kraemer's eliciting variety from the orchestra and generating heightened audience anticipation during the opening tutti yielded to the soloist's entrance, which felt like her only uneasy moment in the performance. Certainly well before the theme's recapitulation, her control proved unrelenting. The tone never lacked assurance, and the first movement cadenza dug deep and soared. 

The second movement goes straight up to heaven, as I once heard Isaac Stern say in a TV interview, explaining why a front-row patron's draping his topcoat over the stage during the Larghetto offended him so: "That's my space!" the proud mid-century violin star asserted. Huang and the orchestra made the ascent splendidly Saturday, without any thoughtlessly parked audience outerwear to worry about.

Though the solo cadenza in the finale was more wild and woolly, Huang  didn't run roughshod over it, and with the help of the orchestral accompaniment, fashioned a brilliant finish. She may have been lending an unconscious thought forward to her encore, a deliberate celebration of down-and-dirty fiddling called "Funk the String," by Aleksey Igudesman. Despite the showpiece's tribute to a disreputable genre, in the laureate's performance it amounted to a triumph of virtuosity and spirit that brought the house down in joyful solidarity.