Review: Slatkin and Roman dazzle with the Oregon Symphony

Joshua Roman singing and playing

Leonard Slatkin made a long-awaited return to the podium to lead the Oregon Symphony (October 16) at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, and boy did he ever make his presence felt. The globe-trotting conductor teamed up with the local band for spellbinding performances of works by Beethoven and Mason Bates, with Joshua Roman, the combined forces delivered a spellbinding Elgar “Cello Concerto.” And the concert came with a terrific encore by Roman and a fun-filled number that the orchestra literally whooped up.

It was sometime in the 1970s when Slatkin last appeared with the orchestra, which was then the Portland Symphony. Since that time, he has racked up 6 Grammys, 35 Grammy nominations, and done stints as music director of orchestras in St. Louis, Detroit, and Lyon, France, plus he has led concerts in practically every major venue around the world. Other than Dimitri Mitropoulos and Igor Stravinsky, both of whom appeared in Portland in the 1950s, Slatkin is the most prestigious conductor to have led the hometown ensemble.

According to Slatkin (see my interview with him in Oregon ArtsWatch), the Oregon Symphony has been noticed for its programming of new music. So, he not only put “Anthology of a Fantastic Zoology” on the program, he made the 30-minute piece, which Bates wrote in 2015, the featured work after intermission.

Consisting of eleven movements named after imaginative creatures from Jorge Luis Borges’ eponymous book, the “Anthology of a Fantastic Zoology” showcased the orchestra’s new music chops. Like a lot of contemporary orchestral music, the piece offered a huge variety of percussion instruments, including timpani, timpani with piccolo D, rototoms, bass drum, castanets, Chinese drum, congas, crotales, cymbals, herd bells, hi hat, ratchet, snare drum, suspended cymbal, witches, tambourine, tam tam, triangle, vibraphone, whip, wind machine, wood block, and xylophone. Slatkin and his forces set this menagerie of instruments whirling about to portray a magical world that traveled from twilight to the witching hour between midnight and dawn (madrugada) in the company of a sprite, nymphs, a gryphon, sirens, a Zaratan, and a snake-like creature called A Bao A Qu.

The movements flowed without pause from one to another and a dizzying array of sonic effects emanated from various parts of the orchestra. There were moments when the strings fired off short, zippy sounds, the flutes fashioned wiggly lines, two violinists stood to the far right and left of the strings to play lyrical passages, tones ricocheted around while some seemed to bubble up from the deep, a big percussive sforzando was followed by a scattering of random-like notes, the celeste elevated one passage into the ether, a massive crescendo melted and decayed into mild blur from the brass section. The collage of sound became tense and then more motoric and louder at the end of piece, making me wonder if all of the creatures got along with each other.

Roman gave a mesmerizing performance of Elgar’s “Cello Concerto,” delving into its dark and tragic emotion and its lighter moments with great sensitivity. Highlights included his immaculate fingerwork during the very fast phrases, the sense of longing and tenderness during the slow movement which at times seemed to hang by a thread, the robust outbursts, and the soul-searching ending.

The standing ovation brought Roman back to center stage where he played and sang Lenard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” He even got the audience to sing the final refrain along with him, and that created a big, warm glow in the hall. Peace out!

The concert began with Beethoven’s “Leonore Overture No. 3” from his opera “Fidelio.” Under Slatkin, the orchestra unleashed an emotional intensity and joyful abandon that fully embraced the context of the story in which “Leonore,” rescues her husband, who has been unjustly held as a political prisoner. The orchestra didn’t hold anything back, and the result was truly stunning.

To top everything off, after the Bates piece, the orchestra cut loose with “Carmen’s Hoedown,” which Slatkin’s father, Felix Slatkin arranged in 1962. It was a fiddling, fun-filled excursion into a couple of the opera’s main tunes, featuring a washboard and violinist Greg Ewer letting out a yeehaw while putting a cowboy hat on his head. That sent everyone home with a smile.