SPCO Artistic Partner Thomas Zehetmair programs his concerts with two works by a 19th-century composer bookending a contemporary one. Last fall, it was Haydn; this spring it's Schubert. But this week, it's the contemporary work that stole the show.
Israeli composer Betty Olivero wrote "Neharot, Neharot (Rivers, Rivers)" for viola and orchestra in reaction to the 2006 war in Lebanon. It's profoundly personal, a lamentation based on elegies of women on both sides of the conflict. This was dense, complex and dissonant music, but always deeply affecting. Kim Kashkashian's viola sang out, giving voice to the women's cries.
As the piece progressed, the orchestra's sound became all the more thorny, giving a visceral sense of the escalating tragedy.
One effect, Kashkashian playing against a tape of actual women keening, seemed unnecessary, as if Olivero didn't trust her own composition. The viola did a more than effective job of recreating the women's pain. In fact, the work came to a powerful conclusion with a passage for solo viola.
For the Schubert, the concert opened with the overture to his opera "Alfonso and Estrella." Schubert never gained success as an operatic composer in large part because of his inability to pick stage-worthy librettos. This fiery overture seems to presage a dramatic and romantic opera, not the narrative muddle that actually follows.
Schubert never heard a public performance of his Symphony No. 9 in C, rightly nicknamed "The Great C Major." After his death, it was rejected by musicians in Vienna, London and Paris, even though championed by no less a luminary than Felix Mendelssohn. It was dismissed as too long and too difficult to play.
History has borne out Mendelssohn's confidence. The length is what gives the symphony its power. Zehetmair maintains a sure hand at guiding the audience through the extended musical structures.
A particularly daring effect was the highlighting of trombones, a relatively new addition to the orchestra, having been introduced during Schubert's lifetime by Beethoven. They added to the work's heroic nature.
