JSO review

Review: Symphony performance naturally enchanting

By Terry Pow
For the Jackson Citizen Patriot
Monday, April 29, 2002 - page A-6

     From Europe's longest river to the world's largest hole in the ground, the Jackson Symphony Orchestra wound up its season Saturday night with a "back to nature" theme. - The first-half gem was a little known piece by an obscure Russian composer, Anatol Liadov.
     A bit of a slacker, he apparently was booted out of the St. Petersburg Conservatory after skipping most of his composition classes. Nevertheless, Liadov could pull together a wonderful performance piece when in the mood.
     And "The Enchanted Lake" is all mood, a shimmering atmospheric work delivered with a magical touch by the JSO under its maestro, Stephen Osmond.
     This is the kind of impressionistic music that succeeds or fails on a perfect sense of ensemble from all orchestral departments, and the JSO had its act together.
     The musical tone of the evening was set with the opening work, a Dvorak overture entitled, "In Nature's Realm."
     Ever easy on the ear, Dvorak's entrancing melodies settled us in a relaxed and bucolic frame of mind, with a pleasant lushness from the JSO's strings.
     Osmond's reading of the storm sequence from Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony" was a little light on drama, maybe because it was a substitution for Ravel's "Oiseaux Tristes" and there hadn't been time to spiff it up, in rehearsal.
     But the orchestra quickly regained its stride with an expansive performance of the "Rhine Journey" from Wagner's opera, "Gotterdammerung."
     The show piece of the evening, Ferde Grofe's "Grand Canyon Suite," received a full-blooded performance, with some wonderful solo moments from section leaders Michael Heald (violin), David Peshlakai (cello) and John Waytena (bass clarinet).
     From the famous clipetty-clop "On the Trail" movement to a "Cloudburst" that echoed around the canyon's rim, the JSO's performance delighted to the final bar.