Oakland Symphonic Surprises / Phillip George

"Astound me!" said Sergei Diaghilev to Jean Cocteau, and that's we all want, right?

Right.

So it was nice to hear and see Michael Morgan and the Oakland East Bay Symphony, on March 20 at the Paramount Theatre, in a vibrant performance of that 19th-century operatic potboiler, Giuseppe Verdi's Otello (1887, Act I)

With a gigantic sheet-metal "thunder sheet" suspended from the stage ceiling, there was little doubt that the opening would deliver its requisite bang, and deliver it did, with peals of resonant brass, sonorous strings, wild woodwinds, and pounding percussion. Soprano Talise Trevigne (Desdemona), tenor Richard Crawley (Otello), and baritone Scott Bearden (Iago) were standouts -- the former two in their rapturous closing duet, and the latter in the hilarious, inventive, menacing drinking song which propels much of the interior section. Tenors Al Glueckert (Cassio) and Trey Costerisan (Rodrigo), and baritone Zachary Gorin (Montano) provided able support throughout, as did the impressive chorus, prepared by Lynne Morrow.

No costumes, sets, not even supertitles... yet the music drama came across in this concert version that brought to life to an important Verdi work that is not done often enough.. a music, after years of silence, which finds the composer in transition between his early "number" operas and the Wagner-tinged late output.

If there was something defiant about the lack of operatic trappings, so there was also about any pretentions of program unity, with a first half that, if it bespoke of any theme, offered a somnambulent contrast to the animation of the second.

The concert opened with an unexpected performance of F.J. Haydn's Symphony No. 49 ("La Passion") (1768) in a dispassionate account that emphasized the interstices between "period practices" and the "great tradition." Morgan conducted from the harpsichord, a continuo instrument not always specified in often-untrustworthy editions of mid-period Haydn scores. Like Dragnet's Joe Friday, this reading seemed to emphasize "the facts, ma'am," with much left to the imagination.

For the record, the movement listings, incorrectly inverted in the program booklet, are

I. Adagio
II. Allegro di molto
III. Menuet e Trio
IV. Presto

Imagination was also wandering out there somewhere in Sala: Symphonic Elegy for Orchestra (2007), by Peteris Vasks. In contradistinction to John Donne, the Estonian composer finds that "Every single person is actually an island and this island is a source of sadness as well as of energy, power, and also of dramatics." Vasks makes his contribution to the quixotic 20th-century legacy of somber one-movement protracted meditations. If there is a hint of post-minimalism here, it is of the Eastern-European spiritualist stripe, rather than the high-energy American original. High lonely tremoli, a languid English horn solo -- you know the drill. A lovely brass chorale leads up to some profoundly cyclical musici interupti, and it all spins down again. Just the thank, you, ma'am, with a little thanks to Dmitri Shostakovich in the charmingly cryptic ending. Certainly a whimper, rather than a wham-bam, but this made the contrast with Verdian post-intermission that more astounding.

Name That Memory / Phillip George

Aaron Copland once said something to the effect that music is pretty much about the melody, and, while this is overdrawn, there is still much to be said about the notion.

The Marin Symphony's Season of the Silver Screen continued on March 30 with a program that was less cinematic but rather more anamnestic.

OK, I admit -- had to google that last word for dramatic effect: it means, according to dictionary.com, "the recollection or remembrance of the past; reminiscence" and it brings to mind the memorability factor in music.

I'm home now. I'm remembering the music of the concert. What do I remember, just off the top of my head, without referring to my notes, but rather, instead, just the notes of the concert that I can remember?

The Haydn Cello Concerto, with its opening thematic gambit of a demonstrative C, followed by dotted "long-short" rhythms B C D E F and the cadential (ending) phrase of F E D E F C B C.

Catchy tune, which I've seemed to know all my life, and indeed the piece was astoundingly only relatively recently re-discovered (1962) at just about the time I was tuning in.

Also memorable was Hai-Yi Ni's animated and elevated playing, bringing a still-youthful demeanor and freshness to the endeavor as well as the experience of a solo career that dates back to 1991.

Keeping on the Aaron Copland citations, this is an actual quote: “A melody is not merely something you can hum.” And this definitely came to mind when recalling the sometimes-impressive efforts of Pierre Jalbert in Fire and Ice, a 20-minute work that comes with a resounding several concluding minutes of excitingly strident percussion that forced its way into the consciousness.

The proceeding "Ice" was an age of stilled strings and shimmering by-now-a-bit-over-used bowed vibraphone strokes that left its own glacial moraine in the mind.

And as for Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 7, here's the composer on the subject -- "Wherever I go, I have nothing else in my mind but my new symphony, which must be such as to make a stir in the world, God willing."

And here's the cinematic Herr Rosenberg in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus... "A young man trying to impress.... Too many notes."

And, while this is unfair, and probably irrelevant, and Dvorak was not all that young at 44 when he completed this symphony, still we can hear the composer working hard to astound.

And the Marin Symphony gave it a gorgeous run, from the purely sonorous side of the street. And Dvorak provides symphonic solutions here that are not always the expected ones, and that go beyond some received norms.

Still, what remains? For that, his best symphonic workouts were next to come in his remaining two symphonies.

What lingers in the mind is that the composer had a ways to go. But that the Marin Symphony has come a long way, and continues of late to produce quality concerts on a par with the best.