What is it about the old tunes that tug at the heartstrings so? It is difficult to say, but they were casting their habitual magic spells Saturday evening at the Lakes Area Music Festival in Brainerd.
Baritone John Taylor Ward, the festival's associate artistic director, sang five of Aaron Copland's Old American Songs in the composer's own orchestral arrangements.
These songs resonate with nostalgia for a simpler America of times gone by, and Taylor Ward's mild, congenial baritone took you to a place where water lapped the bows of paddle steamers on the Mississippi and homespun music-making brightened the domestic parlor.
"Long Time Ago" was winsome and poignant in Ward Taylor's affectionate interpretation, and the well-known "Simple Gifts" benefited from his clean, careful enunciation of the Shaker sentiments.
"The Dodger" — a witty paean to American pluck and adaptability — prickled with mischief, while Ward Taylor pulled a clutch of barnyard imitations from his vocal hat for the evergreen "I Bought Me a Cat."
Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto followed, absorbing some of the sepia that tinted Ward Taylor's musical journey into old America.
Suliman Tekalli was the soloist, and his swashbuckling manner in the concerto's opening movement had a zest and snappiness that tapped the rhythms of a hoedown.
The slow movement opened with a gorgeous solo from oboist Henry Ward, on summer furlough from the Buffalo Philharmonic. Tekalli picked up Ward's poetry and ran with it, eliciting a ripe, viola-like tone from his lower strings, with sweetly keening musings in the upper register.
