YOSA Philharmonic, Edgar Meyer
The bass comes out of the shadowy depths, reaches into the
brilliant heights
November 10, 2011A flying elephant could be a circus stunt in a Disney cartoon, or it could be a miracle of artistry and grace.
The second possibility was realized when Edgar Meyer, the world’s reigning virtuoso on the double-bass, joined the top-level ensemble of the Youth Orchestras of San Antonio in demanding concerti by Giovanni Bottesini and by Mr. Meyer himself.
The YOSA Philharmonic opened its Nov. 7 concert in the Majestic Theater with a very beautiful orchestral work from 2006, “These Worlds in Us,” by young American composer Missy Mazzoli, and closed with Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 “From the New World.” Music director Troy Peters conducted.
The double-bass is a cumbersome instrument, well suited to providing the harmonic or rhythmic foundation in ensembles where other instruments play more glamorous roles, but not designed for speed or songfulness or light-footed dancing, and not necessarily comfortable in the spotlight. Mr. Meyer stands among the very few virtuosi who have been able to make it sing, dance and fly as naturally as a violin.
The first thing one noticed was the liveliness of his instrument’s sound, rich with overtones, so that even the lowest notes gleamed brightly. And then there were the high notes, well into violin territory, producible on the double-bass only by legerdemain involving harmonics. In his own third-movement cadenza for Bottesini’s Concerto No. 2 in B Minor, Mr . Meyer reached those stratospheric heights with seeming ease, amazing accuracy and full-bodied timbre. In both the opening and the closing allegros of the Bottesini, Mr. Meyer displayed tremendous agility, light-footedness and a penchant for snappy flourishes. He brought wonderful delicacy to the tender andante.
Mr. Meyer’s own Concerto No. 1 in D proved a splendid contribution to the repertoire. The piece is America in it bones, with a bluesy first movement and a third that recalls a bluegrass hoedown. The spirit of Hoagy Carmichael hovered over the middle movement’s casual lyricism. In accompanying passages, the orchestra often provided a backdrop of gemlike points of sound. The slow movement included quite a nice clarinet solo, very nicely played by Joseph Mora, from East Central High School.
Ms. Mazzoli’s “These Worlds in Us,” first performed by the Yale Philharmonia in 2006, lasts only nine minutes, all of them deeply considered and affecting.
In a program note, Ms. Mazzoli writes: “This piece is dedicated to my father, who was a soldier during the Vietnam War. In talking to him it occurred to me that , as we grow older, we accumulate wolds of intense memory within us, and that grief is often not far from joy.”
Indeed. Ms. Mazzoli has created a structure that rises from grief to, if not precisely joy, a serene sense of wonder. But with her toolbox of very complex (and very tightly controlled) textures, harmonies and rhythms, she weaves contradictory feelings together, varying in their balance, but always present in and through each other. It’s thought-provoking for listeners and challenging for the musicians, who did a highly credible job with it.
In the Dvorak symphony, the YOSA Philharmonic’s strings sounded notably stronger and smoother than they were a year ago. Mr. Peters maintained crisp pacing and good ensemble precision, even in the intricate scherzo, but balances were often strange, with background and foreground lines given equal weight. The trumpets, especially, could take justifiable pride in their confidence and polish, but they seemed to forget that some of their lines were meant to be secondary or tertiary.
Solid solo work in the Dvorak came from Mr. Mora on clarinet, Katie Hattier from Boerne-Samuel V. Champion High School on oboe, Weston McCall of John Marshall High School on first horn, and (after a false start with a reluctant reed in the second movement’s “Going Home” theme) Ben Stevenson of La Vernia High School on English horn. Mr. McCall’s three section-mates in the Dvorak were all pros from the San Antonio Symphony -- the only ringers in this concert -- and he held his own with them.
Mike
Greenberg
