Margo Kline: Academy Orchestra Brings Exotic Works to Granada

The program, under substitute maestro Arild Remmereit, more than meets expectations

By Margo Kline, Noozhawk Contributor | Published on 07.19.2010

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The Music Academy of the West programs a wealth of serious classical works every summer, and on Saturday night, its Festival Orchestra added a measure of true originality.

Furthermore, the festival orchestra comes together every summer almost like a pickup band, and on this occasion faced a substitute conductor after Jeffrey Kahane had to bow out because of illness. The colorful young Norwegian maestro Arild Remmereit proved to be a smashing surrogate.

The program more than met expectations, as a nearly full house at The Granada heard three works that are, to say the least, not performed all that frequently.

First on the program was Sergei Rachmaninoff’s introspective Isle of the Dead, composed in 1909 after the Russian had viewed the painting of the same name by Swiss artist Arnold Bőcklin. The picture, according to the program notes, made quite an impression at the end of the 19th century — two robed figures in a boat, seen from the back, approaching a cypress grove on a rock-bound island with a coffin on board.

Rachmaninoff had recently completed his Second Symphony and his Third Piano Concerto — two dazzling works that would seem to have little in common with the somber Isle of the Dead. The Granada audience gave the work prolonged applause.

After this somber beginning, the orchestra then played Samuel Barber’s Medea’s Dance of Vengeance, Opus 25a. Any resemblance to the composer’s seraphic Adagio for Strings is nonexistent. Originally composed as a seven-part score for choreographer Martha Graham in 1946, Medea is a musical portrayal of the Greek sorceress’ rage and dreadful crime of revenge on her husband, Jason.

After intermission, the orchestra played Igor Stravinsky’s 1947 revision of the ballet Petrushka, a Burlesque in Four Scenes, originally written in 1910-11. Stravinsky went to work on this extravaganza not long after his success in 1908 with The Firebird and Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes in Paris.

“Petrushka” is the Russian equivalent of “Punch” in western puppetry, a figure of mischief and mockery. Stravinsky’s music transforms the character into a sad and lovelorn figure more like Pierrot in commedia del’arte. The music is rife with old Russian folk themes, as well as the modern dissonance that Stravinsky put to use well before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Pianist Marnie Hauschildt brought home the work’s evocation of Russian street fairs, and the ebullient conductor Remmereit virtually danced on the podium as he led the orchestra.

Of course, the audience members rose to their feet for an ovation at concert’s end. These young academy fellows are simply the cream of the crop, from places as far-flung as Texas and Inchon, South Korea.

A word of commendation is also in order for Richard Feit, the Music Academy’s vice president for artistic programs and operations. He came up with this selection of thought-provoking and infrequently heard music.

— Margo Kline covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributor.

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