Eiji Oue returns to Orchestra Hall for concert showcasing veteran bassoonist

The Minnesota Orchestra paid tribute to one of its own — John Miller Jr. — and welcomed back former Music Director Eiji Oue in a Friday night concert at Orchestra Hall.

For the veteran concertgoer, this was an occasion for a certain amount of nostalgia. Perhaps some in the audience recalled Miller, the orchestra's principal bassoon the past 44 years, playing concertos with Neville Marriner at the podium; others might have remembered Oue's more flamboyant moments — for instance, walking onstage wearing a Lone Ranger mask during a concert on Halloween.

The years have been kind to both. The Miller of today doesn't look much different from the man standing next to Marriner on the cover of a revered LP released in 1984 of concertos by Mozart and Vanhal. As for the irrepressible Oue, he is, of course, the Peter Pan of podium meisters.

Miller's tenure as principal, the longest in the orchestra's history, was honored with a performance of the Concerto Concertante for Two Bassoons and Orchestra by Christian Ludwig Dietter, a contemporary of Mozart's. On the potentially touchy matter of who in the bassoon section should play along with Miller, a novel — and just slightly wacky — solution was hit upon: all three would play, one movement each.

The format called for one of the three — Mark Kelley, J. Christopher Marshall and Norbert Nielubowski — to sit in a chair in front of the podium next to Miller, play through one of the movements, then stand up, accept his applause, walk off and then the next player would come on. One expected Oue to hold a card above each player's head with an applause meter gauging the audience response in the manner of old talent competitions ("And the winner is …").

Dietter has faded from history, but his concerto holds up nicely. It's deftly written and is full of witty touches. The cadenzas, composed by Nicholas McGegan, have the flavor of cartoon music in 18th-century style. Miller and his colleagues played with easy assurance and smooth, rich tone. Afterward, Miller returned for a brief and very sweet encore, a traditional Swedish tune, "Walking Song."

As an overture, Oue opened the evening leading 10 brass players in Music for Double Brass Choir by Giovanni Gabrieli, the kind of ear-filling music that, though 400 years old, sounds like it was written for Orchestra Hall. The second half was taken up with Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5, one of those staples of the repertoire that is seldom played anymore because people think it's played too often.

This is highly emotive music of the sort Oue favors. Donald Francis Tovey, the musicologist, said of it, "A critic who could call it restrained would be in evident medical need of restraint himself." The work's effects are easily exaggerated, as was the case Friday night.

Climaxes under Oue's prompting and arabesque gestures were whipped up into a frenzy, often prematurely. Tempos were stretched as if they were made of taffy. The "Vivace" section of the finale was taken so fast that the music's structure dissolved. Dynamic nuances were ignored in favor of an unrelenting loudness. To be sure, on a crude level, this was exciting music-making, guaranteed to make an audience cheer wildly at the end. But it was Tchaikovsky on steroids, doped up and out of control.

Michael Anthony writes about music.