This is a tale of two well-known composers who knew each other well. And of another who's not well-known enough.
The two famous ones are Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn, two Germans who — along with a handful of other European guys born around 1810 — basically shepherded in the Romantic era with their passionate creations.
The other is Adolphus Hailstork, a contemporary American composer who might be to the classical concert hall what August Wilson was to the theater: A chronicler of the African American experience whose work is rooted in traditional forms but is always prescient and often profound.
The Minnesota Orchestra presented works by all three on Friday night that left me hungry for more, satisfied and disappointed. So if you subscribe to the old two-out-of-three theorem, it was a successful concert. Not one likely to change your life, but it did feature some outstanding playing by cello soloist Alban Gerhardt on the Schumann Concerto and a taste of Hailstork that made me wish his work would appear on local concert programs more often.
Opening the evening was Hailstork's "Epitaph for a Man Who Dreamed (In Memoriam: Martin Luther King Jr.)." Composed in 1979, it opens in a grief-soaked sound world reminiscent of Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" but employs a wider range of instruments and emotions before building to a full-orchestra howl of anguish. It's a tremendously powerful piece that deserves to be heard more often than just on the MLK holiday weekend, as do King's words.
And here's hoping that the Twin Cities will soon host a performance of Hailstork's 2022 requiem cantata, "A Knee on the Neck," composed in memory of George Floyd.
By comparison with the opening work, Schumann's Cello Concerto could have seemed an artifact from a bygone era. But soloist Gerhardt, English conductor Matthew Halls and the musicians of the orchestra made certain that it was delivered with a heart-on-sleeve approach and the requisite amount of fierceness and urgency. Each lyrical phrase, aggressive bout of bowing, and striving, heartfelt high note from Gerhardt felt laden with emotional layers, even more so in a wistful duet with the orchestra's principal cellist, Anthony Ross. It was a performance almost as powerful as the Hailstork.
Considering how much Schumann and Mendelssohn had in common, I came into the concert's concluding performance of the latter's Third Symphony (the "Scottish") hoping for a performance similar to the Schumann Concerto in nuance and subtlety. But what Halls and the orchestra offered seldom possessed those qualities. From the overly ponderous opening chorale to the should-have-been-bouncy chase scene of a finale, it felt like an opportunity lost.
For most of the Mendelssohn symphony, Halls turned the volume up way too high, allowing even the most tender interludes to blare and blast. While the conductor found some of the distinctly Scottish sonorities that some interpretations miss, the performance just felt heavy, with a paucity of dynamic contrast and crispness.
I do credit Halls for a fine choice in performing the work without pauses between movements, but its potential impact was muted by a sameness of sound. The transitions could have been as bracing as a polar plunge, but instead the shifts in mood and tone proved moderate and unchallenging.
