Think Rossini, Mozart and Bizet. Think growing up in musical families, getting singled out as kids for advanced instruction and living up to expectation. That much they had in common. Yet, if there was any one thing that Cascade Symphony Orchestra drove home this past Monday night at Edmonds Center for the Arts, it was this: each of these guys made music his way.
Fact: At age 19, Rossini sat at a table in a room two floors up composing his “La Gazza Ladra” overture and tossing the sheets of his score out a window into the waiting hands of copyists three hours before it premiered on stage. This dude thrived on deadlines.
Fact: Mozart’s concerto for violin No. 5, composed at age 17, dazzled audiences with its quirky sense of humor, brilliant melodies, thematic complexities and daring feats of imagination.
Fact: Bizet’s Symphony in C was a 17-year-old’s exercise written to please his music teacher, the much revered Charles Gounod.
Those facts came clearly through in the use, Maestro Miropolsky and company made of them.
In performance, Rossini’s last minute push to finish the “La Gazza Hadra” overture registered spontaneous and exciting. The charm CSO got out of the composition, I attribute to Rossini being delighted with himself. The guy got a kick out of coming through when the chips were down.
Guest violin soloist Artur Girsky’s wide-ranging virtuosity did deeply inspired justice to Mozart’s explosive genius. Girsky swooned, soared and, now and then, allowed a faint smile to cross his face. Girsky gets Mozart.
His Symphony in C may evidence a little pandering to Bizet’s headmaster: the structural parallels and some of the phrasing and orchestration definitely say Gounod.
If CSO lagged a little anywhere, it was there in those spots where Bizet was not Bizet. However, the spirited involvement raising signs to come of “Carmen” more than offset any reluctance to self-invest. The finale was absolutely gala.
Be yourself worded the message that registered with me. Favored by nature, nurture and circumstance or not, it is the only way to go.
Reactions? Comments? Email Dale Burrows at entfeatures@heraldnet.com or grayghost7@comcast.net.
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