Scandinavian nature and American jazz mingle gracefully with Heyward, Baltimore Symphony
Jonathon Heyward conducted the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Saturday night at the Music Center at Strathmore. Photo: Laura Thiesbrummel
Young conductors are infusing energy into the American orchestral scene. Like Gustavo Dudamel and Klaus Mäkelä, among others, Jonathon Heyward made news when he began his tenure as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra last season. The South Carolina-born maestro, now 32, served up a Scandinavian-American smorgasbord in his latest concert, heard Saturday evening in the Music Center at Strathmore.
Heyward, who took the BSO post amid significant good will, seems to have settled into the job in his second season. He conducted this program, a pleasing mixture of music from this century and last, with buoyant confidence. The opening work, Carl Nielsen’s Helios Overture, depicts the sun rising and setting over the Aegean Sea, reflecting its composition in 1902, during the Danish composer’s stay in Athens. Sustained notes in the cellos and double-basses, which grew and receded at the opening and conclusion of the piece, evoked the surge of the Hellenic surf.
Rising octaves and sevenths in the horn section sounded with noble confidence. The three trumpets’ crackling fanfare heralded the first crest of the piece’s well-executed crescendo of sound. A brightly detailed fugue in the strings broke out in the faster section, with associate principal horn Gabrielle Finck taking the lead as the sun sank in the west.
Heyward then led the BSO debut of the substantial new Tuba Concerto by Wynton Marsalis, premiered in 2021. The first movement’s sustained groove of accented metric shifts jostled the ear. BSO principal tubist Aubrey Foard interjected with sounds made by singing at the same time as playing, creating otherworldly harmonies. The second movement (“Boogaloo Americana”) featured hand claps and Latin American percussion in its evocation of the funky dance style with Puerto Rican and African-American roots.
Aubrey Foard was the soloist in Wynton Marsalis’s Tuba Concerto Saturday night.
The lamenting third movement paired soulful tuba melodies, smoky and rich, with sighs and slides from wah-wah muted trombone. The fourth movement (“In Bird’s Basement”) alluded to the big band and bop sounds of Charlie Parker, as well as nods to Rossini and Bernstein along the way. Foard mastered the concerto’s many demands, with fluid runs difficult for an instrument not known for its agility, and an elegant sound across a wide range. His approach, at times too well-mannered, slightly undersold the quirky edges of this intriguing new work.
The confusing presence of the BSO’s harpist warming up before Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony was explained when Heyward announced a surprise addition to the concert, William Grant Still’s Threnody (In Memory of Jan Sibelius). Echoes of African-American spirituals mixed with a funeral march featuring brass, snare drum, and tubular bells. Heyward offered the piece, composed for the Sibelius centenary in 1965, as a gesture towards national unity in the wake of the American presidential election.
The evening’s main attraction was a burnished, slow-burning rendition of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony. The introduction to the first movement, shorn of strings completely, featured the solid ensemble of woodwinds and horns, the latter led by new principal horn James Ferree, one of the appointments through which Heyward is beginning to shape the BSO. Heyward expertly paced the intense build-up of sound, arriving at the return of the opening horn theme with satisfying fullness. Sibelius reprises his themes in a surprising way, transforming the movement into a scherzo and even faster trio, which Heyward drove to a well-disciplined conclusion.
The graceful slow movement featured the tender sounds of another new principal musician, flutist Martha Long, who began her tenure at the start of this season. (She fills a seat long left vacant, after the departure of Emily Skala in 2021.) The violin section lent a suave, unified tone to the luscious variations following the main theme. Heyward and the BSO emphasized a curious motif, the leaned-on C-sharp often unsettling the prevailing harmony, to create a pleading effect.
The high point of this symphony rests on the final movement, inspired by the sight of a flock of swans taking flight. Sibelius begins the movement with a scurrying theme, played with buzzy intensity by the BSO strings. The horns layered the swan theme, in long half notes, over top of the string tremolos, arching serenely over the opening meter. Flute and other woodwinds soared peacefully on the charming countermelody in quarter notes, the whole creating an uplifting musical scene. The six closing chords, separated by striking, measured silences, crowned the vast crescendo of sound from the massed orchestra.
The program will be repeated 3 p.m. Sunday at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. bsomusic.org
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