Leon Botstein and his Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra — with the exception of the cello section — rose from their seats at the start of their first-ever Tucson concert Saturday and played the American national anthem.
The audience at Centennial Hall quickly followed, many with hands over hearts. From the back of the hall, you could hear people softly singing.
Then the orchestra played the Israeli national anthem, and those folks among the 1,100 who had reclaimed their seats stood again and many of them softly sang along in Hebrew.
The gesture of unity set the tone for an evening of music-making that was at times starkly unfamiliar, yet comfortably inviting.
Botstein, who juggles his day job as president of New York's progressive Bard College with his full-time duties leading the Jerusalem and American symphony orchestras, is a bold programmer. He challenges his audiences to try something outside their comfort zone; in our case Saturday it was Ernst Toch and Miklós Rózsa, 20th-century composers whose works are mostly foreign to American audiences. To sweeten the deal, he anchors the program with something utterly familiar and striking; for us it was Copland's magnificent Third Symphony with its nationalistic heart-tugging third movement "Fanfare For the Common Man."
In both Toch's "Big Ben Variations" and Rózsa's Violin Concerto, Botstein played up the ensemble's quintessential Central European tendency for darker tones. "Big Ben," which Toch sketched out on his last days in London in winter 1933-34, felt like a snapshot of London — bright with the introductory chimes and crisply plucked strings then growing progressively more brooding, which Botstein effected by amping the tempo.
The Rózsa is a bundle of darkly-hued energy, which critically acclaimed violinist Robert McDuffie emphasized with frenetically-paced bowing that brought out the composer's intended flashes of dissonance.
Rózsa composed the concerto in 1953 for the famed violinist Jascha Heifetz who consulted with Rózsa on the final score. Heifetz, renowned for his flawless technical prowess, inspired composers to write hugely virtuosic pieces; the Rózsa fulfills that challenge by casting the solo violin to carry the heaviest load. McDuffie, an animated player, thrived in that role.
With the heaviness so predominant in the concert's first half, it was curious to speculate how the 85-member Jerusalem Symphony would pull off Copland's bright, hopeful Symphony No. 3.
Happily, Botstein brought to the Copland a wonderful airiness, imbuing it with uncharacteristically bright playing from a group known to thrive on darker hues. The third-movement "Fanfare," which Copland alludes to throughout the piece, was spectacularly colorful, even excusing a few unflattering contributions from the brass.
The concert opened UApresents' 2008-09 classical series.
