Slatkin and DSO bring a snazzy bite to more rarely heard Copland

Source: Detroit Free PressOct.迷你倉 13--With music director Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in the midst of a three-CD recording project for the Naxos label encompassing Aaron Copland's ballet scores, Detroiters are getting a crash course in some of the American master's best-known and least-known works. The former includes the staples "Appalachian Spring," "Billy the Kid" and "Rodeo," while the latter includes the rarities "Gohg," "Hear ye! Hear ye!" and "Dance Panels: A Ballet in Seven Sections."Slatkin is also working more Copland into the mix to fill out the recordings, including this weekend's 11-minute curtain-raiser, "Three Latin-American Sketches." Two of these lively miniatures were written in 1959, the third added to the set in 1971. They aren't major Copland works, but they're alluring all the same, and deserve to be heard more often than they are -- these were the DSO's first performances.Written in the composer's populist mode and scored for a chamber orchestra spiked with Latin percussion, the music overflows with pleasing melodies, syncopated rhythms, call-and-response and vibrant color. Slatkin brought a keenly incisive rhythmic snap to the opening "Estribillo" on Saturday, while "Paisaje Mexicano" unfolded with wistful rural lyricism carried by warm playing by the DSO winds, notably clarinetist Ted Oien. The final "Danza de Jalisco" was a burst of joyous dance music, the slippery rhythms sliding between 6/8 and 3/4 meters. The orchestra sounded snazzy, articulate and light on its feet. Though not literally a ballet score, "Three Latin-American Sketches" has become a favorite of choreographers, and you could hear why.From here Saturday's program turned to core repertoire, starting with Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 with soloist Conrad Tao, a strikingly gifted 19-year-old born in Urbana, Ill. He played with strutting confidence, brilliant technique and an self storagempressive musicality that balanced elegance and exuberance in the opening Allegro, a measured calm in the slow movement and crisp excitement in the finale.Still, I found much of the performance more dutiful than revelatory, and passages like Beethoven's otherworldly development in the first movement lacked magic and mystery. Perhaps the comparison is unfair, but I kept flashing back to the thrilling drama, spontaneity and intellectual and emotional depth that pianist (and recently anointed MacArthur Fellow) Jeremy Denk brought to the same concerto with the DSO a few years ago. Denk made the music sound as if it was written yesterday; in Tao's hands the piece sounded its age. Tao is the real deal, but maturity requires seasoning. As an encore he raced through the finger-gusting finale of Prokofiev's Seventh Sonata with a gleeful and well-earned joy in his own virtuosity.After intermission, Slatkin led the DSO through Tchaikovsky's portentous Symphony No. 5 with a strong point of view. He downplayed the music's gut-wrenching turbulence in favor of a more contained set of feelings. He favored bright tempos and structural clarity over wild emoting. The results were often rewarding though a bit cool at times and a little rushed in the finale. Under Slatkin's firm hand, the orchestra sounded fully engaged, phrasing as one and producing a warmly nuanced sound and blend. Oien's clarinet again led the way in the funereal opening, and Karl Pituch's solo French horn sang the lovely, melting theme in the second movement with exquisite taste and breathtaking control. As the symphony reached its denouement, the brass took charge led by new principal trumpet Hunter Eberly -- what a difference this fine musician is making in strengthening the backbone of the ensemble.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the Detroit Free Press Visit the Detroit Free Press at .freep.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷利倉