Henderson Symphony should relax, build on strings’ strength

By Joe Brown

Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Sporting shades, dressed in black ties and black dresses, the Henderson Symphony Orchestra looked cool. The shades were a practical thing, because the musicians were sitting in the bright, direct Sunday sunlight for the afternoon show at Henderson Pavilion.

An appreciative, healthy-sized, casually dressed crowd gathered for the free outdoor performance, which opened the volunteer community orchestra’s 22nd season. The 90-minute program offered several graceful moments, but just as many strained and sprained sounds.

Beginning with the overture to Mozart’s opera “Cosi fan tutte,” the orchestra initially impressed with staccato strings and filigreed winds, the playing brisk and confident — and most of all relaxed. This was in the warm-up rehearsal preceding the program. Conductor Taras Krysa waved away applause after the run-through of “Cosi,” but the audience was right. The “formal” performance was flat in comparison.

Most of the orchestra disappeared for the second piece, Richard Strauss’ Serenade for Winds in E-flat major, which calls for 13 wind instruments, with paired flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons at its heart. Strauss wrote the serenade when he was 17, and it is described in the symphony’s program notes as charming and vivacious. But Sunday’s performance was cautious and overdeliberate, and the brief piece came off sour, monotonous, even a bit dirgelike.

The afternoon’s centerpiece was Aaron Copland’s “Quiet City,” ostensibly a showcase for soloists Katherine Mathiasmeier on trumpet and Molly Murphy on oboe. Copland wrote his nocturne for a play by Irwin Shaw, and the searching, yearning strings are meant to evoke a twilit sky and that particular emotional stirring only this composer can create. But the piece never achieved liftoff. Mathiasmeier played eloquently on trumpet but couldn’t rescue this “City” on her own.

After an intermission, the orchestra sat down for Mozart’s Symphony No. 4, which the musicians accomplished admirably. They seem to do better in movements with a stronger, more assertive rhythm and meander a bit when the music calls for meditative lyricism. Fortunately, the strings do most of the heavy lifting in this piece, and the Henderson Symphony’s strength, at this point, is in its string section.

Krysa and the symphony have a month to build confidence and give the wind and bass sections a dynamic workout before the next Pavilion concert, Oct. 17, which offers contemporary composer Jennifer Higdon’s popular “blue cathedral,” Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in B-minor and Sibelius’ Symphony No. 1.