At first blush, this weekend’s Minnesota Orchestra concerts might appear ideal for a Valentine’s Day date. At their center is a Peter Tchaikovsky “Fantasy-Overture” inspired by Shakespeare’s most famous love story, “Romeo and Juliet.” The work features a sweeping tug of the heartstrings that has become a pop culture cliche, often used to spoof scenes depicting love at first sight.
And while Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” is too creepy a psychological thriller to be called a love story, it does boast an emotion-packed score by Bernard Herrmann, including the complex and conflicted soundtrack to a love scene. And who better to top things off than Sergei Rachmaninoff, who has created so many memorable evocations of romanticism in his piano concertos and symphonies?
But the orchestra has a surprise for you: Friday night’s concert at Orchestra Hall provided a welcome departure from the predictable, taking each of the three pieces in unexpected directions. Under the baton of Houston Symphony music director Juraj Valčuha — who always has demonstrated impressive chemistry with this orchestra on past visits — it proved a program of rapt intensity that avoided any inclinations toward schmaltz or superficial romantic gestures. Instead, it offered three deep and involving interpretations that made convincing cases for the unique gifts of each composer.
Herrmann may have composed the scores for only eight of Hitchcock’s 59 films, but he created richly layered orchestrations full of conflicting emotions and palpable tension ideal for works by “the master of suspense.” Valčuha and the orchestra expertly summoned up the anxiety pulsing through two scenes from “Vertigo” before concluding with a sweep-you-off-your-feet love scene that was nevertheless tinged with a bittersweet sadness.
As for the concert piece that Tchaikovsky wrote with “Romeo and Juliet” in mind, it was delivered with gripping forcefulness, managing to make much of the music seem simultaneously distraught and hopeful. The woodwinds were especially impressive, resolving the tragic conflict in a comforting chorale.
While the works by Herrmann and Tchaikovsky shared an episodic structure, taking listeners from one specific scene to another, Rachmaninoff’s Third Symphony is not so easily broken down. It’s more of a sonic odyssey best experienced by surrendering yourself to the experience. If you wish to be wrapped up in one of those memorable melancholy Rachmaninoff melodies, you’d best look elsewhere, for the Third Symphony (completed in 1936) is one of the least romantic of this neo-romantic’s works.
Yet Valčuha and the orchestra made perfect sense of all the fragments from which the composer created this collage. Every small solo became a seductive whisper, be it emanating from Jaclyn Rainey’s French horn, Erin Keefe’s violin, Fei Xie’s bassoon or Timothy Zavadil’s bass clarinet.
While Rachmaninoff’s Third can be a challenging work to follow — it’s quite unconventional in structure, with one theme dovetailing into another — Valčuha seemed in complete command of the interpretation throughout its very involving 40 minutes.
