The premiere was a violin concerto titled Beautiful Passing by Steven Mackey, a leading vernacular-based U.S. composer on Princeton University's faculty. For all his inviting guitar and percussion-based sensibility, he's challenging; this concerto has a particularly serious subtext, his mother's death, in the kind of work a composer must write regardless of outcome.
The soloist is a protagonist of sorts, making her way through an intense orchestration that sounds like Saturday-night traffic with snatches of car radio heard amid the rabble. The character of the solo writing goes from wan to vigorous though Mackey's graphic adherence to the concerto's extramusical concept was something of a creative glass ceiling: The piece doesn't hit the level of invention one expects of him until its second half. That said, Beautiful Passing is mature in the best sense with great clarity of purpose, deft handling of percussion, smart balances among unlike-minded instruments.
The performance was a model of what a new-music premiere should be: There was little guessing about what the music had to say. Playing from memory, violinist Leila Josefowicz's range of color, articulation and all-around charisma served a piece that's not necessarily out to showcase the soloist in its overall sound portrait.
Of course, the Tchaikovsky didn't have Philadelphia sonic glamour. But Princeton compensated with soul. Maybe because performances of this piece don't come along so often for these players, extra freshness was particularly evident in principal hornist Douglas Lundeen's second-movement solo, phrased like a heartfelt opera aria.
Few symphonies are so dependably exciting as Tchaikovsky's 5th, but Milanov heightened the impact with its internal workings. Underscoring its form, structure, function didn't make the music more cerebral, but added heat because Milanov, more than many conductors, knows how to harness these elements as expressive entities.
Contact music critic David Patrick Stearns at dstearns@phillynews.com.
