WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2001

Civic Symphony Orchestra of Boston

Max Hobart, Music Director and Conductor

At: Jordan Hall, Sunday

Lee’s ‘War and Peace’ Premieres

By Richard Buell, Boston Globe Correspondent

“If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs ... If I should die, think only this of me: that there is some corner of a foreign field that is forever England .. . He's gone, and all our plans are useless indeed. . .” The words are by two poets who died in World War I (Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke) and those of Ivor Gurney. Gurney, who was a composer as well, returned from the trenches alive but ended up destroyed mentally by the experience. He lived for another 20 years.

Thomas Oboe Lee, in his new Fourth Symphony ("War and Peace"), assigns the words, somewhat disconcertingly at first, to a soprano. Soon, however, you begin to notice that, because of the distancing this creates, the words work upon the listener quite differently. Those weren't certainly Owen, or Brooke, or Gurney, being portrayed onstage. Nor were they the fraught, standing-in-for-all-of-male-humanity generalizations Benjamin Britten foists on his soloists in the War Requiem.

Soprano Peggo Horstmann Hodes sang - with poise, commitment, and palely pretty tone - in another mode altogether. Lee has obviously grasped the rhythmic life of these poems. He sees to it that the words tell. They never lack against cadences of natural English. He has a subtle way of thinning out the overall texture - not too abruptly - whenever the singer is in the foreground. Instrumental lines thread in and out, around and between. These instrumental lines, and for that matter what Lee does with the orchestra in general, don't have to be nearly as objective as the singer. His rat-a-tat-tat march music can be, on purpose, almost, but not quite, exasperating. At which point it turns improbably florid. Faux Shostakovich it isnt. And the composer has, it seems, listened well to the mellow pastoralism common to so much English music of the early 20th century.

Lee's symphony is an adroit, well-put-together piece and a quite moving one. Its manner is lean, strong, and never overbearing. Max Hobart and the Civic Symphony gave it a sonorous, well-prepared premiere. Before intermission, Joseph Silverstein showed in the Brahms Violin Concerto that he has lost none of that purring-tabby quality BSO subscribers remember when he was its concertmaster, nor any of his quick, feline, precisionist attack. What a bowing arm! Sane and straight was the story here and, at the end, in what is usually a curtain raiser, the Berlioz “Roman Carnival” Overture. Well, why not?

THE BOSTON GLOBE

Monday November 20, 2000

Civic Symphony Orchestra of Boston

Max Hobart, Music Director and Conductor

Cecylia Arzewski, violin

At: Jordan Hall 11/1//9/2000

Arzewski triumphs in return

By Ellen Pfeffer, Boston Globe Correspondent

Back in the ’70s and ’80s, Cecylia Arzewski was a young member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, ultimately becoming an assistant concertmaster. She was an indelible character: opinionated, perpetually dissatisfied, outspoken, impolitic, nonconformist, a limit-tester. But she was a gifted violinist who might have gotten stuck in a professional rut because she wasn't good at institutional game playing. Wisely, she got out of town.

After a stint as associate concertmaster at the Cleveland Orchestra and now serving as concertmaster of the Atlanta Symphony, Arzewski returned to Boston yesterday afternoon to play the Beethoven Violin Concerto with her old BSO colleague, Max Hobart, and his orchestra. The occasion reminded this listener (who hadn't heard the violinist since her BSO days) of the school reunion where the class nerd comes back as Bill Gates or the dreamy bohemian appears as a prize-winning author. That is to say it was a triumph.

Maturity becomes Arzewsk still tall and willowy, she appeared on the Jordan Hall stage in, a drop-dead gown remarkable for its understated glamour: garnet red silk skirt with sparkly black border design and a black silk camisole. Her playing was also remarkable for its understated brilliance and poetic elegance. She has enough technique to make everything look and sound easy in this difficult and elusive piece. Every note was impeccably tuned, the tone sweet but not overupholstered.

Her scale passages and arpeggios were pellucidly clean and even. Better, though, she is a true servant of the music. Although she was the soloist, she never played as if the orchestra were incidental but as if she were simply the. leading member of the ensemble. When another instrument had the melodic line and she was playing filigree around it, she kept her part subordinate. Her sound was very intimate throughout, although when she had the spotlight to herself in the cadenzas she really let it rip. Her phrasing was gorgeous: if she had to play a motif twice, it was always subtly varled, and when she came to those high notes many violinists milk for every bit of tonal nectar, she was restrained.

Hobart was nothing if not supportive of his old friend and the orchestra played as if they too were trying to show the violinist to best advantage. On the first half of the all-Beethoven program Hobart conducted a slightly slow, soft-edged Egmont Overture and the Symphony No. 1. The latter piece presented nice clarity of textures, harmonic voicing, and dynamic variety.

THE BOSTON GLOBE

Tuesday, March 7, 2000

Civic Symphony Orchestra of Boston

Max Hobart, Music Director and Conductor

At: Jordan Hall, Sunday afternoon

Flutist Zoon, Civic Symphony delightfully in tune

By Michael Manning Boston Globe Correspondent

It’s easy to run out of superlatives when describing Jacques Zoon, the virtuoso principal flutist of the BostonSymphony Orchestra: and the guest soloist of Sunday afternoon’s Jordan Hall concert by the Civic Symphony Orchestra of Boston. But the most effective is also the first to which one inevitably turns - brilliant.

His technique is extraordinary in facility, dynamic and coloristic range, articulation, and rhythmic precision. The repertoire for flute and orchestra is comparatively narrow, although a handful of single movement concert pieces persist. Of these, none is more persistent than the Poem for Flute and Orchestra, an impressionistic work by American composer Charles Tomlinson Griffes. Zoon played it with the most delicate shades of color and subtleties of articulation, effectively raising this estimable but shallow piece to a higher station.

But Jacques Ibert’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra is among the finest works in the genre, exploiting the technical reach of the instrument without sacrificing deeper musical interest. It’s also one of the more eclectic works of the early 20th century, not so much a stylistic polyglot by a musical polymath as a sensible synthesis of influences drawn from one of the most fecund periods in musical history.

It was Zoon’s rhythm that most stood out in this context, motivating and modulating the cleverly asymmetric moto perpetuo of the first movement; clean, fast, articulation in the finale; and extraordinary warmth in the beautiful andante (with able assistance from concertmuster Costin Anghelescu with the orchestra’s strings).

Speaking of the orchestra, it’s become one of this writer's favorite assignments. Conductor Max Hobart and the orchestra’s reading of Schumann’s Symphony No. I was clean and satisfying. The Boston premiere of Christopher Theofanidis’s cinematic and accessible "Metaphysica" must have pleased the composer. The piece is a pageant of orchestral color, some of it deliciously subtle, much of it unabashedly joyful, all of it economical in its use of modal, rhythmic, and timbral resources.

THE BOSTON GLOBE

Tuesday, January 25, 2000

CIVIC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA OF BOSTON

Max Hobart, Music Director and Conductor

Gil Shaham, violin; Andres Diaz, cello

At: Harvard University, Sanders Theatre, Sunday afternoon

Shaham, Diaz pull heartstrings

By Ellen Pfeifer Boston Globe Correspondent

In 1986, when he was 14 and an enormously promising unknown, violinist Gil Shaham made his Boston debut playing the Wieniawski Violin Concerto No. 2 with the Civic Symphony Orchestra of Boston.

Now an internationally recognized virtuoso, Shaham came back to play with the Civic Symphony on Sunday afternoon, The occasion was the orchestra's 75th-anniversary benefit concert as well the celebration of “Music Director Max Hobart's 20th year with the ensemble.” The concert, which included the Mozart Violin Concerto No. 5, K. 219, and the Brahms Concerto for Violin and Cello, Op. 102, with cellist Andres Diaz, was one of those feel-good musical occasions in which every participant was touched in an ineffable way. The orchestra, as an ensemble, rose to the occasion and played with unusual polish and esprit. Many of the string players, not needed in the smaller orchestra dictated by the Mozart concerto, sat in the audience to absorb the lessons in phrasing dynamics, and sheer virtuosity that Shaham was dispensing. Diaz, partnering Shaham in the Brahms, played with great power and drama. Hobart called forth orchestral sound of uncommon beauty and edged up the pulse to an unusual degree of excitment.

Shaham, himself seemed to be having the best time of all. With his cherubic features and very physical performing choreography, he is riveting and appealing to watch. He clearly gets excited about the music and that pleasure radiates from his face. Then there is his playing! Particularly impressive in the Mozart, he offered up unfailingly gorgeous sound, perfectly in tune, totally assured no matter what the tempo, register, or style of articulation. Moreover, this technical perfection was harnessed to a profound musicality, a wonderfully sense of rhythm, and an intuitive understanding of phrasing. He seemed to take special delight in the boisterous “Turkish” music of the finale, bringing both wit and brilliance to the performance.

In the Brahms concerto, this listener was somewhat less overwhelmed than the audience was. To these ears the balances between the solo violin and cello was skewed too much to the advantage of the cello, and the orchestra, too, seemed to cover the violin in places. Still, there were many exciting exchanges between the two soloists and things got wonderfully hot and uninhibited in the Gypsy finale. Diaz sometimes can make too much of a good thing in his vehemence of attack, reducing tone to explosion, but he played very beautifully in the quieter, more lyrical music of the slow movement.

Hobart opened the program with Beethoven’s Fidelio Overture. Other conductors might make more of the work’s internal drama. However, few could make a conmmunity orchestra sound so professional.

THE BOSTON GLOBE

THE CIVIC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA OF BOSTON

Max Hobart, Music Director and Conductor

At Jordan Hall, Sunday afternoon

Virtuoso work from Civic, violinist

By Michael Manning Boston Globe Correspondent

The first time I heard violinist Victor Romanul play was during a recording session with the Boston Conservatory Chamber Players, of which he's a member. Even among his estimable peers, he struck me as belonging to an even higher league. Sunday afternoon in Jordan Hall, assisted by Max Hobart and the Civic Symphony Orchestra of Boston, that initial impression was fortified by one of the stellar performances of this young season.

Romanul is an extraordinarily musical player, which really means two things: that the sum of his skills are always used to serve the music, in this case Saint Saens’s Third Violin Concerto; and that the effect is so beautiful as to beggar words other than the nebulous, "musical" reserved for such occasions.

He has technical resources to burn, but never indulges in grandstanding, and although the Saint-Saens is a virtuoso’s piece, difficulty was the furthest thing from this listeners consciousness. The opening of the concerto is in the alto register, and Romanul's sound was luscious. The passage work was clean, even, in tune, and seemed effortless. When it came to Romantic line, as it often does in this piece, Romanul spun long, seamless phrases with even tone and subtle dynamic gradation.

The orchestra was a model accompanist, and this is an accompanied piece, not an integrated symphonic work like the Brahms Concerto. The slow movement is one of the best that Saint-Saens ever wrote, with simple, inventive colors - like the wonderful doubling of soloist in harmonics, with clarinet an octave below at the movement's end. In taking up the Andantino’s big tune, oboist Bernadette Avila drew a tear or two of her own, and I've nothing but praise for the lovely, operatic texture the winds provided for this magnificent aria.

Amateurs often provide performances that, in terms of conviction and affection, should be envied by professionals. Nearly every concert by the Civic Symphony has reinforced it for me. Hobart brings discipline to his orchestra, which rewards the music, hence the audience.

The two orchestral works were performed very respectably, beginning with John Corighano's Fantasia on an Ostinato, an interesting and colorful ' etude on the ground from the Allegretto of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, which concluded the concert, Only in the symphony's breathless finale was I aware of the orchestra's technical limitations, which were of relatively little consequence in the end.