In an attempt to inspire moviegoers back to the cinema post-COVID, the theater chain AMC Theatres showed an uncharacteristic but now widely popular commercial before its movies. Nicole Kidman, the star of the ad, describes the film-viewing experience with a candor and focused drama that resonated across generations — earnestly with older viewers, ironically with younger. Overwhelmingly positive responses to the ad, whether to its sincerity or to its camp, revealed a deeply held consensus that the ad’s monologue does in fact convey a core need of American life. We need these larger-than-life encounters with our culture’s art — even better when we feel like we know the artists.
In Jacoby Symphony Hall, the Jacksonville Symphony’s weekend performances under Courtney Lewis’s baton fulfilled this need for larger-than-life cultural encounter. Here without screens or projectors, their timely and provocative Jacksonville premier of Vaughan Williams’s Fourth Symphony, coupled with a charming account of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto and the Florida premier of Angel Lam’s “Please let there be a paradise…”, rivaled a night at the movies. The solo feature of local celebrity cellist Alexei Romanenko lent extra star power to the occasion.
The program opened with Lam’s mystical new work, “Please let there be a paradise…” Centering themes of spirituality and dreams, Lam’s combination of misty textures with folk-like gestures tells the story of soul-searching after her father’s tragic, unexpected death. The dream-like mood set by the work’s first scene, through singing bowls and well-executed instrumental glissandi (gliding between pitches), set the stage for an open, searching quality in passages employing pentatonic motion (based on five-note scales) passed around the orchestra.
These gestures developed, incorporating more intense melodic motion and instrumental colors, as the narrative motion reached a high point before retreating back into the misty world of the opening. Throughout, gentleness accompanied the work’s dense, sophisticated voice — as if the composer’s wisdom expertly guided the audience through these unforgiving questions of death and despair. The Symphony’s convincing rendition of Lam’s score benefited from Lewis’s attention to orchestral color and seriousness of purpose.
Czech composer Antonín Dvořák complained about the cello’s muddy low range and nasal high register. At the request of his friend and to the surprise of all, he wrote his Cello Concerto in B minor anyway. Dvořák’s reservations found no basis in Romanenko’s account of the work, with Romanenko’s singing, almost Bel Canto upper range and precision in the lower register removing any doubt about the reasons behind this work’s enduring popularity. While the winds at times covered over subtleties in passages featuring the middle range, the orchestra’s support for one of their own came through in their heightened sensitivity to Romanenko’s expressive phrasing.
Especially vigorous applause after the thrilling first movement demonstrated the audience’s excitement for Romanenko’s solo appearance. With a chance to retune before moving on, orchestra and soloist found a unified voice in the second movement’s aria-like phrases. Romanenko’s virtuosic fireworks in the final movement — especially impressive given the performer’s injury in his thumb — warranted the theatric spin of the cello during the orchestra’s final fanfare. Throughout the concerto, Romanenko’s charismatic presence balanced with his intensity of focus, all supported by the amiable ensemble accompaniment of friends and colleagues in the Symphony. Needless to say, the audience eagerly returned to their seats, following the standing ovation, for the encore.
The evening’s most difficult and sophisticated listening of the evening proved the most rewarding and needed in the Jacksonville Symphony’s premiere performance of Vaughan Williams’s Fourth Symphony. The work’s circumstances of composition — the political turmoil and violence of 1930s Europe — eerily paralleled the uncertainty in the context of the weekend’s post-election performance. Vaughan Williams’s Fourth Symphony marks a dramatic break from the “cowpat pastoralism” that critics unflatteringly referred to his music as, Lewis described.
Vaughan Williams, transformed into the urban modernist in this work, provoked a new ferocity and moroseness from the Jacksonville Symphony’s strings. The score, full of music beyond description in either story or image, brought listeners into an encounter beyond that available anywhere else in Jacksonville. That we had the opportunity to experience this concert in Jacksonville testifies to the value of the Symphony’s work and its rightful trust in music director Courtney Lewis. Under Lewis’s leadership Friday evening, the Jacksonville Symphony’s performance of this program brought the audience into experiences of spirituality, community and interiority in cinematic proportions.
Matt Bickett is a musician and scholar living in Jacksonville. He serves as director of music ministries at Riverside Presbyterian Church and artistic director of the Friends of Music at Riverside.
