Yesterday evening saw the second live-stream performance by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra to be presented the month. The first was last week’s Bernstein & Appalachian Spring program conducted by Peter Oundjian. Yesterday saw the return of Music Director Jader Bignamini to present a program entitled Fountains & Pines of Rome. Most readers probably know that the title refers to the two best-known tone poems by Ottorino Respighi, and they accounted for the second half of the program.
The first half was “something completely different.” It began with “Emerge” by Michael Abels, who is primarily a film composer. The best description of the genre would probably be “maximal minimalism.” The minimalist thematic content unfolds through a gradual introduction to account for all of the instruments in the ensemble. The climax emerges with all the performers going at it with full force; but, from my vantage point, I felt that the score took far to much time to leave anything for the impact of the climax.
This “overture” was followed by a three-movement piano concerto by Leokadiya Kashperova. The soloist was Alexandra Dariescu, who, according to the notes available to me, had rescued this “cinematic” composition from obscurity. Sadly, the keyboard work for this composition could not have been more heavy-handed; and the music itself recalled that all-too-familiar trope from Amadeus about “too many notes.”
Fortunately, things improved when Dariescu returned for her encore. She was joined by Concertmaster Robyn Bollinger for the arrangement of Béla Bartók’s Sz. 68 “Romanian Folkdances for small orchestra.” I must confess a fondness for this music, since I played the solo clarinet part with a community orchestra in my student days. As far as I was concerned, that brief duo encore was far more satisfying than the three-movement concerto. However, during the intermission, the video feed screened a previous recording from 2025 of Dariescu playing the second movement of Maurice Ravel’s G major piano concerto, which was far more engaging than Kashperova’s efforts.
The pine trees in the Villa Borghese gardens of the Piazza di Siena (photograph by Howard Hudson, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license, attributed to Howardhudson at English Wikipedia)
The second half of the program accounted for the overall title, including the order in which the two tone poems were performed. This was the proper ordering, because the “Pines” score is the one with a final movement that builds to a thundering climax. The movement is a Tempo de marcia; and, every now and then, I run into comments suggesting that this was the march of Benito Mussolini’s troops! That said, this is music that makes the best of the full forces of an ensemble. When I last listened to it in Davies Symphony Hall, it was clear that the audience was having just as much fun as the musicians!
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