The number of empty seats at Saturday's Anchorage Symphony Orchestra concert -- not a bad house, but nowhere close to full -- surprised me. After all, this was billed as a program of favorites determined by a poll of local symphony-goers.The "people's choice" selections were kept under wraps until a few days ago, but one suspects more people might have shown up if they'd known that one of the picks was the first ASO performance of Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain" since 1969.
The one announced item on the program was Bartok's Viola Concerto, a complex, brainy, thorny, often lugubrious and not easy to like piece. It was made easier by the clear, beautiful tone of the soloist, Eliesha Nelson. Her elegant articulation and attention to line brought out the melodic strengths of the work, particularly in the slow movement and, though this is not a showcase for extreme fireworks, impressive virtuoso effects in the finale.
The orchestra, however, played uncertainly in many places. I wasn't pushed out of my seat by glaring missed notes, but there were rhythmic problems and, overall, a tentative feel, as if the players weren't enjoying themselves. This was an issue from the start of the night, with a tepid reading of Bernstein's Overture to "Candide" and a slightly more enthusiastic approach to Rossini's Overture to "The Italian Girl in Algiers."
Even "Night on Bald Mountain," in the familiar Rimsky-Korsakov version, pushed through competently rather than stomping and sparking with flame, as if the participants in the depicted Witches Sabbath were loosing their religious fervor. A turning point came with the dawn music, gorgeously introduced by clarinetist Karl Pasch, which produced a shift in the orchestra's efforts as contrasting as the shift in scene depicted in the score. One was reminded that, despite his reputation as a noise-maker, much of Mussorgsky's most attractive writing comes in the form of short lyrical codas.
As if the cloud of discontent had been dispelled by Pasch's clarinet, the ensemble responded more attentively to Randall Craig Fleisher's conducting in the final selection, Tchaikovsky's "Francesca de Rimini." It's hard to imagine that a poll of audiences anywhere would choose this tone poem as a favorite over the same composer's "Pathetique" Symphony, for example, which was an option in the poll. It has none of the grand, memorable and repeatable melodies that have placed Tchakovsky among the immortals. But as the ASO poll was designed, it was linked with "Night on Bald Mountain" as a single choice, like a menu that makes you take spaghetti if you want meatballs. So it rode in on Mussorgsky's tail, so to speak.
What "Francesca" did offer the listeners was a lot of intensity and numerous solos, which came off well as, in fact, they had with the Bartok.
Listening to the performance from the balcony, the violins sounded somewhat muffled to me, but others said they were amply present and adequate.