Lost (and found) in admiration: 'Appalachian Spring' rubs shoulders with Tower's new saxophone concerto

 It's customary that symphony programs will be crowned by a work with a flashy, loud, or at least quite assertive ending, but this weekend's Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra evenings (wrapping up with today's 5:30 concert) come to rest amid phrases that subside at the end. Moods of calm and hope prevail in two works composed amid the turmoil of World War II: Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring" and Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fifth Symphony.

Plus, the new work, generated amid the unrest of our current political era, wears its optimism unmistakably. Joan Tower, the composer of "Love Returns," a concerto for saxophone and orchestra, was on hand to lend her radiant charm to the ovation on the work's behalf. She justly praised the ISO's performance, as well as that of Steven Banks, the soloist, and guest conductor Robert Spano. 

Joan Tower basked in the ISO presentation of "Love Returns." 

With luck, she becomes a nonagenarian two years hence, and her track record is impressive.'The 2025 concerto, titled "Love Returns," is the latest in a series of several works that display her intimacy with each solo instrument in turn and what it has suggested to her in close partnership with a large ensemble.

Banks, a young musician with extraordinary receptivity to the classical stature of the alto saxophone, presented a hearty and heartfelt account of the 24-minute work, which the ISO co-commissioned. Composed in six linked sections, "Love Returns" memorializes her husband, Jeff Litfin, after a 50-year marriage ended with his death in 2022. It expands from a short piano piece the composer dedicated to him, adapting its inspiration to the saxophone and extensive orchestral accompaniment. 

Having presented the premiere with the Colorado Symphony, on Friday Banks displayed his complete identification with the work, playing it from memory. The rapport between the soloist and Spano was tight and mutually inspiring. To compare it briefly with other Tower concertos I know, it's characteristic of her concertos that she threads an orchestral re-entry smoothly into the material already presented by the solo instrument. 

In "Love Returns," the sixth section unfolds from an extensive solo cadenza. Then there's a suggestion of the mutually reinforcing nature of love in the way the clarinet is given phrases that parallel what the saxophone presents. Earlier, there's a striking phase of crisis music (I'm supposing this is the fifth section) in which the saxophone's agitation might present the difficulties love presents either in retrospect or in dealing with some kind of outside attack.

Banks' command of intense passages never had a touch of shrillness to it. The tone remained centered and impassioned whether the notes flowed or assumed a jagged profile. Yet the overall mood suited the dedication Tower intended to celebrate an enduring, imperishable love.

Spano in a few past guest-conducting stints here renewed the impression he made in 2019. The main vehicle was the Sibelius Second Symphony. My prose got a little purple in highlighting his podium manner: "So much that's germane to the music seems to emerge in performance without choreography. There are no slalom poses, taffy pulls when a swelling sound is called for, no crouching or lunging. He adheres to the basics: tempo and dynamics, tempo and dynamics." That could be applied as something less than praise to a "Kapellmeister" style, a time-beater who counts on any inspiration to arise from the orchestra's independent response to the score.

Spano is not that. His gestures, while direct and to the point, are imbued with insight. In Copland's "Appalachian Spring," he illuminated the wealth of rhythmic intricacy and melodic resourcefulness the ballet suite presents in fully accessible manner. He seems to have conveyed full understanding to the orchestra. His beat spoke as eloquently at the bottom of a stroke as at the top. The ISO got it, and when Spano gave the principal oboe and principal flute the first opportunity to stand at his first curtain call, it acknowledged their contribution to the overall excellence of the performance.

That command was also evident in the longer, less familiar work, which ended the program, Vaughan Williams'  D major symphony. In this piece, there are not the literal referents that Copland's dealing with a ballet scenario required. For Vaughan Williams, an abstract structure had to do the work. Right away in the first movement, you can hear balanced contrapuntal texture, with controlled suggestions of disquiet. But the overall mood of calm prevails even in the Scherzo, whose quiet ending confirms the atmosphere. In "Romanza: Lento," the third movement, there are great swellings of sound. Here, despite the obvious welling up of emotion, Spano signaled that no sentimentality would be indulged in.

Such calmness, free of modernist tics, could be disdained as too gentle. Copland is quoted in the ISO program book in disdain, which shocked me. Vaughan Williams was clearly not afraid of sustaining a pacific manner. I recall long ago seeing Andre Previn look reprovingly to quiet a restless audience between movements of Vaughan Williams' "Pastoral" Symphony as he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra on tour in Ann Arbor. Here and now in Indianapolis, staying respectful when significant musical balm is offered seems to be no problem when the music is in such expert hands.