Philharmonia Northwest began its concert season with an upbeat performance guaranteed to give a lift to the spirits and a rousing start to the orchestra’s fortieth year. Sunday afternoon at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Laurelhurst—such a lovely sanctuary and good acoustics besides—the group played Poulenc’s Suite francaise, a modern version of seven Renaissance dances; Shostakovich’s Concerto for Piano and Trumpet with String Orchestra, and Haydn’s Symphony No. 40 (chosen for its number to honor the anniversary).
At every performance, Philharmonia NW invites students to perform also. For this one, prior to the concert proper, the Mercer Island Brass Quintet gave a well-rehearsed performance of a short work, Dan Caputo’s “A Trip Takes Us,” commissioned by the high school music teachers and their coach, Parker Bixby.
The Poulenc work, for just oboes, bassoons, trumpets and trombones, comprises Renaissance harmonies with sudden departures into quite different discordant ones, then a return to the original and unexpected endings. It’s cleverly done in a delightfully lighthearted manner, and the musicians gave it plenty of cheerful vigor.
Julia Tai, music director
The Poulenc was composed just two years after Shostakovich wrote his concerto. He was 27 at the time and probably unnerved by the hostile reception just given his opera The Nose by Stalin’s bureaucracy, particularly as those who displeased the government were apt to disappear. This concerto, therefore, treads very carefully. It’s entirely aboveboard, cheerful and sunny, often astringent, but with not a hint of the undercurrents of irony, sarcasm, or foreboding messages with which so much of his work is imbued.
This is not to say it’s simple. The dense, fast, and busy piano part was played here by Yuliya Minina with apparent ease and a nice touch on the keys. Brian Chin did well in the trumpet part, which is more one of accents and comments from time to time, but which stands out above the strings. This work is really fun to listen to, particularly the last movement which gets faster and faster into a positive whirligig of wild notes at the end. Conductor Julia Tai kept firm hold of her musicians however and the whole work was played with good precision and synchronization.
The concert ended with the lively Haydn, where Tai brought clarity and nuance to the piece and the strings used little to no vibrato, giving transparency to the harmony.
