Sarasota Orchestra reaches heroic heights in Masterworks season finale concert

The final concert program of the Sarasota Orchestra’s Masterworks season took the audience on an expansive journey of heroics, romance, and pure giddy fun.

Fun? Yes. Violinist Gil Shaham was joy incarnate Friday night in the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall performing the rhapsodic Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35 by Erich Korngold. The fabric of this music is in our bones. Born from the height of Viennese Romantic era style, the imprint of Korngold’s scores from the 1930s and 40s is still heard in today’s movie soundtracks.

Shaham wove his way through the tender romance, passionate outbursts and thrilling chase of the final movement. His supple silky tone sang beautifully even in the highest range with stunning technical acrobatics. Yet, it was in the heart-tugging, lyric moments with the full orchestra ready to well up into that “onscreen kiss” moment when most of us fell in love.

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The music is infectious and all the more so when you catch the smile on Shaham’s face as he locks eyes with conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto before launching into a big moment or playful chase, as if to challengeL “Ready for this? Let’s go!”

A world premiere is always a highlight and the program introduced us to composer Sarah Gibson with “to make this mountain taller.” You can call her a rising star, but she already stands firmly as a composer of note with plenty of work, including this commission from the League of American Orchestras and its new Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Orchestral Commissions Program. Toulmin’s name is familiar to Sarasota, where she was a generous philanthropist before her death in 2010, and since then through her foundation. We can be proud of this association and even prouder of the initiative to commission new works from six female composers to help combat the dominance of men in the field still today.

Inspired by her own feelings on the day that Roe v Wade was overturned last year, Gibson drew on images of women scaling the many mountains over the centuries only to find there are still more to tackle. Using the full orchestra, Gibson does not shy away from altering the sound and using extended techniques to create the world she imagined. Without a score in hand, it was difficult at times to identify a muted trumpet from a horn or what percussive instrument was being struck. This lack of certainty takes us all the more into unfamiliar territory that new challenges create.

I am always in awe of the fearlessness required to learn and perform a world premiere, and that bravery, as well as the clear musical chops displayed by the musicians, was astounding. Prieto was a clear confident force on the podium leading to the clarity of the performance.

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A note-by-note description of a premiere misses the main point of music. I focus on whether the music communicates emotionally. Did it plant a message in my heart? If yes, then the compositional techniques, whatever they are, were effective.

I was moved nearly to tears by the impression of squelched voices cut off before full bloom. The voices clearly struggled against forces from every side and eventually broke through for glorious moments and clear vistas. Heroic, triumphant, there seemed no going back. But then it slipped back to the muted struggles. Just a little knowledge of women’s history and current events places this pattern into an all too real context. With one last muted cry cut off abruptly we were back to silence.

A hero of an entirely different world is the focus of Richard Strauss’ tone poem “Ein Heldenleben” (A Hero’s Life). This monumental work requires the entire orchestra to be heroes for 50 minutes and there is not a moment of respite. The score introduces the hero, his critics, his companion, his works of war and peace, and a final denouement.

In the orchestra, the ultimate hero must be concertmaster Daniel Jordan who tackled perhaps the most difficult orchestral violin solo bits in the repertoire. His lengthy cadenzas, operatic in nature, were superb. He sang out easily and was exact with every note.

There is much to digest and to love in this dense score and Prieto brought out its best. Occasional lapses of accuracy or pitch can be expected in any performance, but we heard more than the norm for this fine orchestra. Fatigue could well be a factor, but the audiences did not care and roared with their approval and appreciation.

‘A Hero’s Life’

Sarasota Orchestra, with guest conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto and violinist Gil Shaham. Reviewed March 31, Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, 777 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Through April 2. Tickets are $37-$99. 941-953-3434; sarasotaorchestra.org

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota Orchestra closes season with Gil Shaham and a world premiere