Heyward, Baltimore Symphony serve up an evening of  mystical music at Strathmore

Sun Jan 12, 2025 at 11:02 am

Saxophone soloist Jess Gillam performed Anna Clyne’s Grasslands with Jonathon Heyward and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Saturday night at Strathmore. Photo: WCR

Jonathon Heyward opened the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s new year with a striking concert of mostly contemporary fare, heard Saturday night in the Music Center at Strathmore. The program, set at the midpoint of Heyward’s second season as music director, combined music inspired by three different kinds of revelatory arcana: Biblical, folkloric, and astrological.

The evening began with Sukkot through Orion’s Nebula, a piece from 2011 by James Lee III, this season’s BSO composer-in-residence. Lee, who lives in Maryland and has had a long association with the ensemble, drew on his faith as a Seventh-Day Adventist for inspiration. The piece, he has written, evokes “celestial images of the Messiah coming down out of heaven through the Orion constellation first, the redeemed saints traveling through the constellation, and finally the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven.”

Lee’s style, mostly tonal, often sounded akin to a film score, and the alluring central section of this score, awash with celesta and mysterious metallic percussion, might have accompanied a science fiction scene set in outer space. From earth, the Orion Nebula is often perceived as the middle star in the sword of the constellation Orion. Called Kesil in Hebrew, the constellation is referenced in the Bible, most prominently in the 38th chapter of the Book of Job, where God answers the accusations of Job.

Thumps of percussion and heraldic brass fanfares signaled the opening of the piece, as well as the return of this faster music toward the end. Most of the interest came in that enigmatic slow section, with low sounds from the horns and the occasional distant rumble of thunder sheet and bass drum. Above these sounds hovered a limpid, floating melody suspended in time by the violin section.

In the conventional programming slot for a concerto came an even more recent work, Anna Clyne’s Glasslands, featuring young British saxophonist Jess Gillam. Premiered by Gillam in 2023 with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the work evokes, says the composer, “an imaginary world of three realms governed by the banshee—a female spirit who, in Irish folklore, heralds the death of a family member, usually by wailing, shrieking, or keening in the silence of the night.”

In a tripartite structure like the Lee piece before it, this score featured many buzzing runs for the soprano saxophone in the outer sections. Gillam used the instrument’s wide dynamic range to appear from and disappear into the orchestral mist of sounds. Phrases often ended abruptly with hard pauses, accentuated by forceful snap pizzicati sounds in the strings. The haunting sound of a banshee’s wail came across clearly in extended writing for the instrument’s upper range.

The greatest musical interest came in the slow music at the heart of the piece. Principal cellist Darius Skoraczewski briefly took the lead, accompanied by Gillam, in a slow sequence of wistful, descending chords. Solo viola joined this repeating structure, complemented eventually by the other string principals in a chamber-like arrangement, suggesting a keening lament.

Melodic elements reminiscent of folk song pervaded the work, which turned playful in the concluding section, with pizzicati in the strings accompanying a dance-like theme. The end of the piece, set in a more modal idiom shading toward minor, centered on an ostinato harmonic pattern, recalling the stately pace of a funeral march. Like most of Clyne’s music, this inventive, surprising work will likely reward repeated listening.

Heyward closed with the concert with Gustav Holst’s The Planets. Contrary to the way the piece is often marketed, this suite is not about the planets in an astronomical sense. Holst was an avid student and practitioner of astrology, and the movements are meant to represent the magical influence of each planet on human lives. Thus there is no movement for Earth, and the movements are not in the order of the solar system’s orbits around the sun.

Heyward drove the tempo of the “Mars” movement ahead quite forcefully, shaping impressive climaxes with the large brass section, augmented with a part for tenor tuba, played by euphonium. By contrast, the overly slow tempo for “Venus” featured poised if slightly bland solos by acting associate concertmaster Holly Jenkins, who sat top chair all night in the absence of concertmaster Jonathan Carney. Jenkins played with significantly more character in the breathless “Mercury” movement.

The BSO’s best playing came in “Jupiter,” set by Heyward at a noble, good-humored pace, with a grand statement of the tune Holst later called “Thaxted,” after the village where he lived for many years. Another very slow tempo made the “Saturn” movement extra gloomy, with plenty of space for a lumbering melody given to the double-basses. The electronic organ, played by Lura Johnson, was not loud enough really to be heard in its star moment, a cheesy glissando near the end of the “Uranus” movement.

The enigmatic “Neptune” proved the high point of the suite, with breathy low-set woodwinds, including silvery alto flute. The women’s chorus, drawn from the Baltimore Choral Arts Society under the skillful direction of Anthony Blake Clark, sang its siren-like parts from just off-stage to the left of the house. As indicated in the score, the final fade of the unaccompanied singers was aided by the gentle closing of the stage door.

The program will be repeated 3 p.m. Sunday at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. bsomusic.org


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