Anchorage Daily News

The usually rock-solid brass of the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra sounded less than granite-like in the initial notes of the first concert of the season Saturday night.

The exposed opening chords in Dmitri Shostakovich's "Festive Overture" found them unsteady in terms of pitch and synchronization. The strings came off somewhat tenuously as well. Perhaps it was opening-night jitters.

The winds, however, played like they were having the night of their lives, both here and in the numerous solos they delivered over the rest of the program. There is room here to salute the principals who had most of those solos: Roxann Selland Berry, flute; Sharman Piper, oboe; Martin Hoffer, bassoon; and, filling in the first clarinet chair, Mark Wolbers.

Wolbers, particularly, caught my attention with his playing in the last half of the concert. The places where the spotlight went to his instrument tended to be softer, slower selections, for example "Dawn on the Moscow River" from Modest Mussorgsky's opera "Khovantchina." Yet these gentle moments were so meticulously and soulfully played as to rank among the high points of the evening.

Guest artist Wendy Warner was featured in Sergey Prokofiev's Sinfonia Concertante for Cello and Orchestra. She has a large sound, seldom drowned out by the big ensemble. Her opening line was like a long, thick ship's rope, slowly and implacably drawing the vessel of the listener into the dock of Prokofiev's score. Her technical mastery of special effects in the finale was most impressive.

The Sinfonia Concertante is not, however, one of Prokofiev's more populist pieces. You wait 15 minutes or more before the succulent second movement tune supplies the first enduring musical marker. The theme and variation form of the finale is more accessible, but I couldn't help thinking that some competent editor would do Prokofiev a favor it by whittling down this long concerto by 10 minutes.

The audience did (mostly) stand for Warner. But after three bows, they were done. There was sustained applause in the middle of the suite drawn from "Khovanchina," however, right after the "Dawn" section, which suggests that a lot of ears were eager to hear something a little more succinct and ingratiating than the Sinfonia Concertante.

Conductor Randall Craig Fleischer ended the night with Igor Stravinsky's "Firebird" Suite. The first of the composer's iconoclastic masterpieces, it remains, in many ways, the most influential, connecting with everything from the jazz of Alice Coltrane to the theme for the "Xena, Warrior Princess" television series.

The winds, again, laid on the acoustic color with elegance and confidence. By this point -- long before, actually -- the strings and brass had found their feet as well; principal trumpeter Linn Weeda's agility in the "Infernal Dance" deserves mention.

Fleischer had arranged for an auxiliary band to step in from the wings at the climaxes of the Shostakovich, "Khovanchina" and "Firebird." Their entrance was a little theatrical but not distracting. And doubling the forces to six trombones and six trumpets at these times made for a great full sound and was a hit with the crowd.

Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.

ALASKA PRO MUSICA, a trio of clarinetist Mark Wolbers, violinist Walter Olivares and pianist Timothy Smith, all UAA faculty members, will perform at 4 p.m. Sunday at the UAA Fine Arts Building Recital Hall. Tickets are $17 at CenterTix.com. The trio will repeat the concert in Dillingham on Oct. 11 and Kenai on Oct. 18.

ADVERTISEMENT