The concert opened with Brahms's "Academic Festival Overture." The piece began inconspicuously, with a nervous violin figure creeping in. The string motive alternates with a joyous brass chorale, which was played with a wonderfully warm and rich tone. The continued alternation and layering of these stylistically contrasting figures drove the rest of the piece.
Towards the end, the original motives were embellished by cleanly-executed sixteenth-note runs in the strings, building in intensity to the decisive final chord. Although it seemed at times as though Swanson was trying to pull the orchestra along at a faster tempo than they were comfortable with, their performance of the Brahms piece was extremely impressive, especially considering that the piece was not the main focus of the concert.
The Brahms was followed by Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony." The mystery of the symphony's incompleteness (it consists of only two movements instead of the standard four) has been the subject of debate amongst music historians. Although some Romantics advocate the theory that Schubert met an untimely death before he could complete the symphony, it is most likely that he decided that third and fourth movements were unnecessary because the first two were powerful enough to stand on their own.
I found some aspects of the Schubert to be reminiscent of the Brahms: both pieces are characterized by an alternation between two contrasting melodies. The main theme in the Schubert was a relaxed, flowing, pastoral-sounding melody which was passed back and forth between the cellos and the violins. This melody took on an ironic, eerie mood because of its juxtaposition with sections of intense minor chords supporting a fidgety figure in the violins. The violins and cellos did a wonderful job of playing a consistent stylistic interpretation of the melody, despite its sometimes fleeting nature.
The orchestra immediately gripped the audience out of their post-intermission chattiness with the brilliance of the first movement of Dvo?ák's Symphony "From the New World." A semi-programatic piece, Symphony "From the New World" was inspired by Native American music and African American spirituals, whose basis on the pentatonic scale fascinated this Czech composer. The rhythms in this symphony were also clearly derived from non-European traditions. The two very unconventional, syncopated motives occur throughout all four movements of the piece. They are stated in short, light solos passed around the woodwind section, and assertively by the brass at a tasteful ff dynamic.
The second movement consists of a wandering melody which relaxes the tension left over from the first movement, ending on a shimmering chord in the strings. Swanson proceeded without pause from the third to the fourth movement, which returned to the initial tension of the piece. A menacing native battle cry sounded triumphantly in the trumpets, all of the previous themes layering in to create a bombastic finish.
Before the concert, some orchestra members expressed their enthusiasm about the symphony "From the New World." Towards the end of Dvo?ák, I noticed a huge grin on the face of the principal cellist as she struck chords on beats two and four underneath the brass's commanding restatement of the native melody. Not only was the orchestra's passion visible on their faces, but it was evident in the precision, intensity and zeal of their musicianship.