By Peter Hall – February 3, 2024
THE BASICS: Billed as “Shostakovich & Six Strings” guest conductor Robert Moody conducts a fascinating “Desert Transport” by American composer Mason Bates (b. 1977), a somewhat meandering “Film Noir: Concerto for Electric Guitar and Orchestra” by American composer Daron Hagen (b. 1961) and for the second half of the concert the stunning “wall of sound” Symphony No. 10 in E minor by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75) at Kleinhans Music Hall. The concert repeats Saturday night, February 3 at 7:30. Tickets are available for walk-up at the box office, or by visiting www.bpo.org or calling 716-885-5000.
Runtime: 2 hours 10 minutes including intermission
Friday morning’s “coffee concert” got off to an energetic start with conductor Moody picking up the mic to talk about a helicopter ride he took back around 2010 with composer Mason Bates when Bates was visiting Moody’s Arizona Music Festival. This must have been quite a trip because as they traveled around the entire state of Arizona Bates would tell Moody what the landscape below “sounded” like. The result was a 14-minute musical travelogue called “Desert Transport” which is just chock full of scintillating sounds.
Marijuana may be legal in New York State, but you can enjoy a drug-free high with “Desert Transport,” one of those pieces for orchestra that made me glad to have a subscription because I thought “I almost could have missed this.”
As they say “All music was once new” but will it stand the test of time? I hope that “Desert Transport” does. I’m not so sure about the second piece on the program titled “Film Noir: Concerto for Electric Guitar and Orchestra” by Daron Hagen whose music has been on several previous BPO concerts. Over at Kleinhans, we’ve enjoyed Daron Hagen’s Concerto for the Left Hand (back in 2002), an opera, “The Shining Brow” (2006), his “Songbook” (a Violin Concerto in 2011), and “Bandanna Overture,” which was a world premiere in 2021. By the way, “Songbook” (featuring violinist Michael Ludwig) is available on the BPO’s own “Beau Fleuve” record label titled “Built for Buffalo” while “Shining Brow” (the opera about Frank Lloyd Wright) is available on a Naxos CD.
This concerto for electric guitar, features D.J. Sparr, the guitarist for whom the work was originally composed, and it brought together the myriad sounds of a symphony orchestra with the iconic instrument of rock, complete with its own various “enhanced” effects of wah-wah, fuzz, etc. I liked the opening “road-trippy” (the composer’s words) first movement called “Pacific Coast Highway” and really liked “Torch Song” which had a smooth, jazzy “noir” feeling. In the final two movements “You Should See the Other Guy” and “Maybe Not Today” I lost track of the guitar.
Since this guitar concerto was written for a consortium of symphony orchestras, it will certainly get played, and it might live on for the novelty of combining a six-stringed electric guitar with an orchestra. Of course, combining rock bands and electric guitars with the BPO is nothing new and for years we’ve been treated to the music of bands literally from A to Z (ABBA to Led Zeppelin). Look for the music of Phil Collins and Genesis on March 8 and then Fleetwood Mac on April 26.
But the big work on the program, a 46-minute tour de force, is the Symphony No. 10 by the famed Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich which features a huge orchestra starting with eight double basses to open the piece. What a growly sound they make! And the woodwinds are almost all “plus one.” The symphony is scored for three flutes (second and third flutes doubling piccolo), three oboes (third doubling English Horn), three clarinets (third doubling E-flat clarinet), three bassoons (two “regular” plus contrabassoon), five French horns (not just the four in the score), four trumpets (not just the three in the score), three trombones, tuba, tympani, percussion, and strings.
I’ve written many times that even the best stereo system (does anyone still have one of those?) can’t equal a live concert, and while the earbuds or the smart speakers we all have are convenient, they are but a pale imitation of what we could be hearing. And conductor Robert Moody brought out the best in the orchestra playing music by a master orchestrator, Shostakovich.
COMING UP NEXT, CONCERTS FOR KIDS
“Disney in Concert, The Sound of Magic” is billed as “A magical multimedia experience celebrating Disney at 100 and featuring animated sequences on the big screen synchronized to new orchestral arrangements of iconic songs, plus behind-the-scenes historical footage, artwork, and sketches.” That’s next Friday morning, February 9th at 10:30 am and also next Saturday night at 7:30 pm at Kleinhans.
For really little kids, while today’s (February 3) “BPO Little Kids” concert is sold out, you can still get tickets to the encore performance next Saturday (February 10) also at 10:00 am also at Kleinhans. It’s billed as “A special Saturday morning session for our littlest listeners, age 0-5, with their caregivers. Join BPO musicians and community partners for fun musical activities designed specifically for tiny ears and growing minds.”
Kleinhans Music Hall is at “3 Symphony Circle” Buffalo, 14201 where Porter Avenue, Richmond Avenue, North Street and Wadsworth meet at a traffic circle. Visit www.bpo.org or call 716-885-5000. Full-service bar in the lobby or across the lobby in the Mary Seaton Room. Masks are optional.
