By Lawrence Toppman
How does the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra find these whizbangs?
Almost all the youngish music director candidates of the last two years impressed me, and the trend has continued since the naming of Kwamé Ryan. The latest guest conductor, Savannah Philharmonic music director Keitaro Harada, sailed into Knight Theater one week short of his 39th birthday and lit up the podium.
Last things first. Any review of Saturday’s concert should begin with Mozart’s Symphony No. 41. For once, it earned its nickname of “Jupiter,” applied in 1788 because of musical thunderbolts.
From the muscular opening movement to the elegant yet exhilarating finale, this rendition blew away preconceptions of Mozart as an academic or unemotional composer. This was proto-Beethoven, perhaps an inspiration for the 18-year-old German who was yet to write a symphony. (Interesting to think that, had Mozart reached 72 – not unimaginable, as Haydn died at 77 – he’d have outlived Beethoven. How might they have influenced each other?)
When a baby cried out during the opening allegro vivace, Harada turned his head with a smile and gave an “I heard ya” nod without breaking stride. When the movement ended, he told the crowd, “They say it’s the Mozart Effect, right? You have to make babies listen to Mozart. Clearly, that baby didn’t like my first tempo. Maybe he or she will like this one better.” And he launched into a brisk andante that still held tenderness.
He embodied lack of pretension, from his fire engine red socks to the “more, more” gesture he made to ask the audience for applause – in that case, for violinist Francisco Fullana. The Spanish-born soloist, who announced he’d recently become an American citizen, seemed as relaxed as Harada in his flowing flowered shirt. During Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 2, their smiling heads bobbed toward each other, as if sharing a joke.
Like his compatriot Chopin, Henryk Wieniawski was a Pole who moved to Paris (and other places), died young and wrote dull orchestrations with strong parts for his instrument – in his case, the violin. His concertos work only if played with complete conviction, and Fullana brought that to bear. He varied his tone from sweetly caressing in the slow movement (the most memorable) to explosively vivid in the pyrotechnic sections.
Fullana deserved and got a real ovation, not the obligatory half-hearted standing O that Charlotte audiences usually provide. So he played an encore, in tribute to the Granada region where his father grew up: Francisco Tárrega’s “Recuerdos de la Alhambra” (“Memories of the Alhambra”). He turned one of the great guitar solos into a violin piece that demonstrated his gifts but didn’t suit his instrument, as it lost the dreamy romance of the original.
The symphony musicians played well in the Mozart but really shone in the reduced forces of the opener, Zoltán Kodály’s “Dances of Galanta.” Kodály lived in that region of Hungary (now part of Slovakia), heard Gypsy music there and later adapted Gypsy tunes he found in songbooks into this orchestral suite.
Dances flit in and out of our consciousness, seldom staying long enough to develop a full melody yet providing rich orchestral sonorities. The woodwinds rose to the occasion, even sounding like a klezmer band in spots, and the irrepressible Harada danced right along with them on the podium.
You know, we’re still going to need guest conductors after Ryan takes over. Harada’s day job puts him four hours away down the interstate, and he already seems to have a rapport with our musicians. Just sayin’….
Pictured: Keitaro Harada by Claudia Hershner.