Music by Joan Tower & Sergei Rachmaninoff
By
Lyn Bronson
Ginger Kroft Barnetson
[A shorter version of this review will appear in the Salinas Californian on
Monday, April 21]
The Monterey Symphony’s
sixth concert of its season honored two women last night at Sherwood Hall in
Salinas. First of all we heard a concerto for clarinet by Joan Tower, one of
America’s most distinguished women composers. As we all know, a gender barrier
exists in many professions, and music is no exception. Although Aaron Cohen's
Encyclopedia of Women Composers lists 6,196 women composers, a database complied
by the Kapralova Society of women composers of classical music whose works have
been recorded on CD lists only 515. Another honoree during this concert was
the soloist, also a woman, clarinetist Ginger Kroft Barnetson, a fine
principal player with the Monterey Symphony for the last eleven years.
That Joan Tower’s
compositions deserve the serious attention and acclaim they receive was proved
by last night’s performance, which demonstrated how effectively she can
structure a large twenty-minute work and exploit the varied capabilities of the
clarinet. Although the work is somewhat uneven and lacks a certain inevitable
continuity, most of it is undeniably effective and provides a fine opportunity
for a virtuoso clarinetist. Ginger Kroft Barnetson demonstrated an impressive
technical mastery equal to any demand of the score, and her playing was very
expressive.
After intermission,
maestro Max Bragado-Darman treated us to the other work on the evening’s
program, Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 in E Minor. Last night’s performance was
full of big romantic and dramatic gestures, occasionally at the highest decibel
levels (sometimes painfully so). The tradition of this symphony has been
evolving into gradually slower and longer performances. Eugene Ormandy’s
original recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1939 (made when
Rachmaninoff was still alive and acting as an adviser to Ormandy) had a duration
of approximately 43 minutes. A newer stereo version released in 1959 was 47
minutes long, and a recent recording by the LA Philharmonic with Simon Rattle
conducting is 61 minutes long. Although under Max Bragado-Darman’s direction
last night the performance was also on the long side at 55 minutes duration, it
is such a glorious work (with its magnificent Scherzo and lovely clarinet solo
in the third movement) that its great qualities emerged and brought
forth a big ovation at its conclusion.
Maestro Max is to be
commended for programming such a difficult work, and let us hope that someday we
will hear his version of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 1, a symphony which has
such an extraordinary history and is so powerfully moving that it deserves to be
heard more often.
