“Saturday evening was the 60th anniversary of the first-ever St. Paul Chamber Orchestra concert,” writes Terry Blain in Sunday’s (11/3) Star Tribune (Minneapolis). The program featured “a U.S. premiere, two works by lesser-known composers, and a podium debut by a fast-rising young conductor. The premiere was ‘Dark with Excessive Bright,’ a new [double bass] concerto by the American composer Missy Mazzoli.… Over a 15-minute span, ‘Dark with Excessive Bright’ explored the bass’ inner voice in music of eerie resonance.… The concerto is written for string accompaniment only—soloist Zachary Cohen [SPCO’s principal bass] hunched over his leviathan of an instrument … digging primeval utterances from its inner recesses. The effect was riveting…. The audience … gave him a prolonged ovation…. A rarity, the Concerto for String Orchestra by the 20th-century Polish composer Grazyna Bacewicz … cut a bristlingly energetic figure in the German conductor Ruth Reinhardt’s incisive interpretation.… Arthur Honegger’s Pastorale d’Été [featured] SPCO’s principal horn James Ferree … in a number of deliciously mellow solos. Schubert’s Fifth Symphony ended the evening.… Reinhardt is undoubtedly a conductor with ideas and presence, and hers was an auspicious SPCO debut.”
Posted November 6, 2019
