Orchestra 2001 plays Barber and Maggio

Orchestra 2001 celebrated the hundredth anniversary of Samuel Barber's birth with a commemorative program that included one piece by Barber. The other three items on the program were, appropriately, extremely likeable new works.

The Barber entry was one of my favorites: Knoxville: Summer of 1915. The first time I heard Knoxville, I was struck by the fact that Barber chose to set a long prose passage— a description of a boyhood scene by James Agee— to music. Most song settings take poetry for their texts, and the U.S. has certainly produced its share of music-worthy poetry. But we're mostly noted for the first-class prose stylists we've given the world.

Barber's vocal setting for Knoxville follows the natural flow of Agee's prose, and his orchestral music embellishes the text with music that sets the scene and underscores the mood.

I've heard Knoxville a number of times over the last 20 years, in versions that range from a chamber version for piano and soprano up to a full-orchestra version performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Laura Heimes and Orchestra 2001 gave it a reading that was less understated and more dramatic than the other performances I've heard.

But it was also an intensely moving performance. I've never heard a reading that triggered the emotions evoked by Heimes and the orchestra when they reached Agee's "May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away."

Soprano as mother

When Orchestra 2001 asked Robert Maggio to write a companion piece to Barber's work, he decided it had to be something entirely different. He settled on his subject when he and his collaborator, singer-songwriter Mary Liz McNamara, visited Laura Heimes and watched her maneuver between their professional discussions and her new role as a mother.

Summer: 2 A.M. relates to Barber's masterwork by looking at similar material from a new angle. James Agee's text sees family relations from the child's viewpoint. McNamara's looks at the situation through the eyes of someone going through the first, life-changing months of parenthood. The result is a wonderfully comic complement to Barber's gentle contemplation of the past.

Maggio's first section opens with the soprano crooning lullabies and ends with a "Lay thee down now and rest" that slips into "Please. I'm begging you. Go to sleep." Other sections deal with parental anxiety, the conflicting advice of experts, and a semi-autobiographical episode in which the soprano pleads with a cop who stops her because she's speeding from the baby to a concert, then pleads with another cop who stops her when she's speeding from the concert to the baby.

Parents join in

Barber's Knoxville ends, unexpectedly, with the narrator remembering the goodness of his relatives, and their love, but they "will not, oh will not, not now, not ever.... tell me who I am." Maggio ties the two works together with the mother, at the end of the second section, pleading with the baby to "Help me know who you are." Both pieces end with serene orchestral codas.

Laura Heimes overstressed some of the high notes in the Barber, but both pieces suited a singer who is noted for the attention she pays to the words when she sings with early music groups. The orchestra (which includes several mothers and fathers) had a good time joining in some of the acting built into the score.

Gestures without melody

Many modern concertos pit the soloist against the orchestra in a conflict between the individual and the mass. The two concertos on the program were both works in which the orchestra supported the soloist and added emphasis and decoration to the solo part. In the opener, Andrew Rudin's 2008 Concerto for Piano and Small Orchestra, the orchestra sometimes created a buildup to the piano part, and the piano sometimes started a sequence that finished with an orchestra climax.

The piano part in Rudin's concerto mostly consisted of musical gestures, with almost no attempts at sustained melody. It was a good showcase for Marcantonio Barone's sensitive touch and his ability to pull off effects like a passage in which the piano strummed like a harp or guitar.

Sweet song

Rudin's concerto opened the concert with a gem; the last item on the program closed it with a piece that was just as attractive. The first movement of Paul Moravec's two-movement violin concerto is a long, sweet song for the violin, with a beautifully crafted orchestral background. The second movement sings in places, but it's more intense, dramatic and flashy. Overall, the Moravec is a classic grand concerto with a classic bring-them-to-their-feet final display by the soloist.

Maria Bachmann gave it the treatment it deserved and placed a perfect punctuation mark on the end of one of Orchestra 2001's most enjoyable concerts.