A triple header hit by the New Bedford Symphony

The New Bedford Symphony under Maestro David MacKenzie has made a point of mixing the old favorites with less familiar music. Last night’s performance introduced many in the audience to Four Sea Interludes from Britten’s opera Peter Grimes, orchestrated by the composer. The opera tells the story of an English fisherman driven to suicide by the suspicious deaths of two of his apprentices, and the four Interludes served to bridge one scene to another, while telling a tale. The piece was richly orchestrated with four percussionists and a harpist on stage and a clearly emotional piece. After a scene change followed Schumann’s deeply romantic Cello Concerto, with three movements played without pause. The soloist was Carter Brey, principle cellist of the New York Philharmonic, whose playing was deeply felt and technically superb. Unusually for a concerto, the soloist and orchestra were not clearly separate, but interwove their playing, almost like a chamber music ensemble with a larger size. The NBSO strings and woodwinds filled in perfectly. Mr. Brey got a well-deserved standing ovation. The final piece on the program was Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an exhibition. There is a reason the “old warhorses” such as Beethoven’s Fifth or Dvorak’s New World remain popular: they are great music. In this pantheon must fit Mussorgsky’s opus. The death of his friend artist Viktor Hartmann prompted an exhibition of his work, and Mussorgsky wrote a piano etude describing the pictures he saw, woven together by a musical promenade taking the viewer/listener from one work to another. The piece was orchestrated by Ravel into a series of tone poems, with a finale, depicting the Great Gate of Kiev, that had echoes of the 1812 overture. The piece was again richly orchestrated. Parenthetically, I have to wonder if the Britten was programmed after the Mussorgsky, when the question came up “how can we use four percussionists and a harp in another work? The NBSO was in perfect tune with the piece, and it was a resounding success. I would also applaud Carter Brey who democratically sat in as another cellist for the concluding work.