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<\/p>\nWhen Oakland Symphony Music Director Kedrick Armstrong tried to describe the logic behind the program for the orchestra’s season opening concert, he summed it up in one the word: “authentic.”<\/p>\n
It wasn’t much of an explanation, but an apt description of the arts organization and its audience, which filled the Paramount Theatre on Friday, Oct. 17. The crowd was a true cross-section of the city – 20-somethings, longtime subscribers and families, including a baby who only lasted through the first piece. They dressed as if at the movies, and applauded or shouted whenever the spirit moved them.<\/p>\n
Oakland Symphony concerts feel like a party with a good live band, and Armstrong leans into that energy, shaping programs that are as spontaneous as the people who show up to hear them.<\/p>\n
Adding celebrity to the evening, 84-year-old composer Adolphus Hailstork flew in from Virginia to hear the performance of his Symphony No. 1 (1987). It’s a work of great craftsmanship, with an emphatic opening, a la Joseph Haydn, pushed along by consistent syncopations. That opens up to a second theme of great lyrical beauty. The scherzo has a fleet Mendelssohnian grace, and the finale, a joyful busy rondo, fizzes with jazzy licks.<\/p>\n
Originally written for a New Jersey summer music festival, the piece fits Armstrong’s personality and the orchestra easily handled its modest technical demands in the evening’s best performance.<\/p>\n
When Hailstork rose to acknowledge the moment, the audience met him with a wave of applause that swelled through the auditorium like another movement in the symphony.<\/p>\n
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Oakland Symphony Music Director Kedrick Armstrong (Christine Cueto\/Oakland Symphony)<\/p>\n
But the clear audience favorite was soloist Sara Davis Buechner, whose febrile account of Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Minor was the concert’s other high point.<\/p>\n
Buechner, a frequent guest of the Oakland Symphony, tore through the challenging opening movement with virtuosic intensity. Then she turned inward for a second movement of luminous calm and control. She was in command, technically, although her pedaling was so emphatic – her foot lifting completely off the floor – that she was actually out of breath at the conclusion. The orchestra hung with her, though Ravel didn’t make it easy on them, either.<\/p>\n
This is an ensemble that often doesn’t have everything buttoned down and sonically impeccable. Armstrong thus deserves kudos for opening the program with Anna Clyne’s colorful, theatrical “This Midnight Hour”(2015).<\/p>\n
It’s a 12-minute work set in motion by downward-rushing scales in the strings, representing a woman running through the night. The score isn’t fully programmatic, but in the middle section, half of the violas are asked to play a quarter-tone sharp “to emulate the sonority of an accordion playing a Parisian-esque waltz.” I’ve heard this effect land more cleanly in other performances, and in a score that has so much going on there were balance problems and some details that could have been clarified.<\/p>\n
Even so, the final section of the piece came off nicely with haunting solos from trumpeters William Harvey and Leonard Ott.<\/p>\n
The finale was Igor Stravinsky’s 1919 suite from “The Firebird.” The Oakland Symphony’s sound was necessarily leaner than a big-budget orchestra, but they did themselves proud with the interpretation of this repertory staple, which has such a big soundscape. The winds shone throughout, with phenomenal solos by principal bassoon Deborah Kramer and, in the finale, horn Alex Camphouse.<\/p>\n
In the “Infernal Dance of King Kaschei,” with Armstrong driving them like Derby winners, the players went briefly savage, delivering a bravura account.<\/p>\n
Michael Zwiebach is a freelance writer. This article has been provided in partnership with\u00a0San Francisco Classical Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n