In front of a relatively small crowd at Bass Hall on Friday night, the Fort Worth Symphony presented what might be the best program of the season. With two wonderful staples of Russian music in Borodin and Prokofiev taking the stage, it was intriguing to see how Hedges would fit between. But the answer to how it worked can be seen by the fact that this review will simply be glossing over a work like Prokofiev’s Suite from Cinderella which is full of whimsical magic and charm, and will instead focus on the real magic-making that happened in John B. Hedges’ work Fantasia sobre Yma Sumac.
The concert got off to a little rocky start as the Friday “Chic” performance took a jarring cut of the first and third movements of Borodin’s wonderful Symphony No. 2. It’s a shame that those movements were cut as throughout the entire performance it was the best the brass, and especially the low brass has sounded all season. So hearing them play the first movement at the level they were performing would have been wonderful. The cuts seemed to have an effect on the orchestra as well, as there wasn’t a noticeable level of comfort until the end of the Finale.
The performance of the Cinderella Suite seemed to be a direct carryover from the energy of the Hedges work – but we’ll get to that later. The orchestra beautifully brought out the lush, whimsical nature of the work, and seemed to soar throughout, bringing about a wonderfully executed storyline within the work that had the Fort Worth audience on their feet in no time.
But let’s go back to the real headline of the evening – the magic within Fantasia sobre Yma Sumac. The work started off in an unexpectedly wonderful way as Harth-Bedoya presented a surprising moment of audience development by playing a recording of singer Yma Sumac, for whom the piece is written. This not only served for context of what her vocal range was, it also served as wonderful context for the entire work.
Immediately from the opening timpani lines setting the “exotic” stage for clarinetist Ana Victoria Luperi, the audience was whisked away to early Hollywood. While this work was easily as thematic and programmatic as the Prokofiev, instead of giving the audience an easily followed narrative, Hedges presented a very recognizable time, place, and state of mind. But the real magic of the work came not from the Hollywood overture-style orchestration, but instead from Luperi. The choice to voice the clarinet to portray such a versatile singer like Sumac was genius, and Luperi rewarded Hedges at every turn. Her versatility as a player was astounding!
From soaring arioso lines, directly into crass multiphonics representing the extreme low register of Sumac, to dainty floating lines, Luperi could do it all. Hedges sure demanded a lot, and Luperi delivered. At one point, Hedges drops the entire orchestra out for an extended unaccompanied cadenza, and the audience was enraptured on the edge of their seats. When the harp re-entered you could actually hear a collective exhale from the audience that had been holding their breath. Luperi, like horn player Mark Houghton earlier in the season definitely proved to Fort Worth natives that they have some serious young talent within the orchestra. And just like the orchestra sounded their best in Hedges’ Slapdance, and Mark Houghton’s performance, tonight during the Fantasia they were simply “on.”
It is becoming glaringly obvious within this season that this orchestra is capable of great things when performing works that they get excited about – and especially when playing for one of their own. I, for one, cannot wait until the Hedges performance in March.
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