Frank Housh: March 2010 Archives

Saturday's performance of the Buffalo Philharmonic included post-romantic and modern pieces filled with high drama.  The Orchestra was clearly comfortable under guest conductor Christopher Wilkins's baton and to its credit finished the evening with as much energy as it began.
 
The performance began with von Weber's Ruler of the Spirits Overture, an overture to an opera he never completed.  The brief, single movement piece for full orchestra was programmatic to the extreme.  The Overture tells a magical woodland tale, filled with maidens and stolen magic.  The Orchestra played the parts to form, the flutes as the innocent maiden and the horns the ominous tones of the masculine pursuer.  The ending was bright and shiny, a string crescendo in D Major joined by the woodwinds.  The maiden's virtue was preserved and the woodland animals scampered alongside as she made her way home.
 
Glazunov's Concerto