Review: Charlotte Symphony Presents Shostakovich and Mendelssohn
By Perry Tannenbaum
November 8, 2024, Charlotte, NC – Hailing from Norfolk, VA – and perhaps the Sith Order of the Galactic Empire – guest conductor Anthony Parnther has brought a big James Earl Jones voice to Knight Theater and an even bigger personality. He instantly engaged Charlotte Symphony subscribers with a lengthy intro to the first piece of the evening, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Ballade in A Minor (1898). Amid some insightful observations on the Black Britisher’s talents and his fin de siècle milieu, Parnther threw in some shtick that drew attention to his mighty larynx, looking askance at what appeared to be a perfectly fine microphone and coming to the mic’s rescue with his “opera voice” and, a bit later, with his “Shakespeare voice.”
In short, he dared to educate us and did a damn good job of it. The performance was just as brash, though occasionally too loud for the hall. There was gravitas in the opening measures sweeping into a zingy elan. Violins excelled in the midsection of the work with some very tender section playing, and the piece built nicely to an anthemic climax, reminding me of Jean Sibelius’s less-neglected symphonic masterworks. North Carolinians can point with pride to the best recorded version available on Spotify or Apple Music, featuring the Royal Liverpool Phil directed by Grant Llewellyn, who has given so much to The Old North State. Beyond that, Parnther could tell us very confidently that Black composers, according to the latest tallies, account for only 2.5% of programming among America’s top orchestras, knowing that we were quite entitled to feeling superior in the wake of hosting Sphinx Virtuosi a month ago – in a mostly Black and Hispanic program.
Sphinx’s visit turned out to be a gift that kept on giving, for the guest soloist playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, 16-year-old Amaryn Olmeda, was a first-prize winner – and audience fave – at the 24th Annual Sphinx Competition and toured with the Virtuosi two years ago. While I wouldn’t wish to compare Olmeda’s performance to my favorite recordings; including those by David Oistrakh, Yehudi Menuhin, and even Itzhak Perlman (who gave a live rendition at Belk Theater in 2019); there was certainly beauty aplenty in Olmeda’s account, with virtuosity to spare. But Symphony concertmaster Calin Lupanu attacked the infectious Allegro opening more fiercely in 2021, bowing with bolder panache when he played the piece online with Christopher Warren-Green at the podium. After a simple and lovely transition from principal bassoonist AJ Neubert, Olmeda was at her best in the middle Andante movement, freeing Parnther and the CSO to give her more robust support.
Olmeda relaxed and reveled more in the closing Allegretto-Allegro than she had in the previous outer movement, so Parnther and the CSO could be more assertive in their support, but true brilliance seeemed still beyond her at this tender age. Nonetheless, the audience joined me in giving Olmeda a standing O, perhaps sharing my feeling that we should pay her forward. Although attendance at the Knight was strikingly sparse, the young violinist was beaming. With a nicely articulated Bach solo, she returned our appreciation with an encore. Instinct tells me that the ripple of applause from the audience as intermission ended was in response to Olmeda joining them.
The young prodigy could not be faulted for the disappointing turnout, for the Sphinx Virtuosi had triumphed at Symphony’s annual gala last month. More likely, it was Shostakovich, topping the bill with his Symphony No. 9, who was the culprit on a beautiful autumn evening. Yet here was where Parnther and the CSO were at their best. The Norfolk native was pointedly suggestive in his introductory remarks, but mostly objective in his lengthy explorations – cuing us on what to look for in each of the five movements rather than telling us what to make of it. Thorough but never boring or academic, not at all show-offy or self-indulgent. Truly helpful.
The performance was spectacular, brilliantly contoured to the hall with fine evocative details, fully justifying Parnther’s enthusiastic intro. Which instrumentalist shone brightest in the opening Allegro was a tossup between Lupanu and piccolo stalwart Erinn Frechette, but principal trombonist John Bartlett stole all the scenes, emphatically partitioning the many episodes and injecting Shosty’s comedy with just two oompah notes. From that lighthearted opening – antithetical to what all Ninth Symphonies should be in the wake of Beethoven’s behemoth – we plunged into the depths and dolor of the Moderato, the lengthiest movement in this lapidary stunner. Principal clarinetist Taylor Marino, bolstered by section mate Samuel Sparrow, set the doleful tone of this sharply contrasting movement (again antithetical to the triumphal music Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin expected in 1945), achingly extended by two other principal winds, flutist Victor Wang and Neubert. Dreary strings increased the profundity of this oppressed lament, with Marino returning to soar above it in near-manic anguish.
It’s easy to lose your place after this unforgettable pairing of light and dark movements because the last three are played without pause, steadily increasing in intensity until a steady locomotion of victorious woodwinds are prodded into accelerating by the pulsations of the lower strings. These, in turn, triggered and excited the violins. Blaring brass then drove the journey into complete madness – and off the rails. Adding to the overwhelming bite of this sonic climax, the slashing, plucking, and sawing of the bowstrings across the stage added vivid visual drama.
Photos by Perry Tannenbaum
Yet the Greensboro native co-founded the Carolina Chocolate Drops, her first Grammy Award exploit, and now has an opera firmly rooted in the Carolinas to her credit, so an audience studded with black ties and tuxes had no difficulty embracing the polyglot Giddens as their own – even as she navigated a songlist that included Parisian and Celtic selections. They may not have realized that Giddens had played Charlotte before, as far back as 2008 when I caught her with the Chocolate Drops at Northwest School of the Arts. Turrisi and bassist Jason Sypher, who shared the Cistern Yards stage with Giddens at the College of Charleston in May, accompanied her once again, though Lees and Symphony lightened their load. Nor was it obvious that Turrisi would be playing piano until late in the concert when he insinuated himself upstage.
“Mouth Music” was all we needed to hear if we needed assurance that Giddens could make a credible showing at a jazz festival, and there would be more to follow. Lees ceded the stage to the guest trio, lightening the vibe, and Giddens picked up a viola and yielded some of the spotlight to her bandmates, especially Turrisi when he sizzled on his accordion during one of the fiddle tunes. The merriment faded when Lees returned to the podium, replaced by the romance of “Autumn Leaves” en français until Giddens favored us with the English lyric as well. If you hadn’t glimpsed the program, just the tropical sway of the violins was enough to announce our return to the Carolinas and “Summertime” from the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, sweetly sung. Plenty of space was afforded to both Giddens and Symphony in the arrangement of “La Vie en Rose,” and the singer did not seem to be straining to sound like Edith Piaf, which was more than OK with me.
Art on My Sleeve 