In a rousing kickoff to what promises to be an inspiring season of music, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra played a top-notch program of varied works under the dependably skillful direction of music director Jeffrey Kahane.
Beginning with a brand-new piece by 30-year-old composer Daniel Kellogg – assistant professor of composition at the University of Colorado’s College of Music in Boulder – the orchestra boldly established its prominent role in Denver’s “Hot DAM: Arts at Altitude” programs celebrating the opening of the Daniel Libeskind-designed expansion to the Denver Art Museum next month.
After opening remarks by CSO president and chief executive Doug Adams, museum director Lewis Sharp, Kahane and Kellogg, the 12-minute work filled Boettcher Concert Hall with a colorful soundscape that evoked the daring design of Libeskind’s creation.
But the meticulously structured piece, titled “Refracted Skies,” is foremost an ethereal representation of Colorado’s vast, majestic terrain. Kellogg’s unhurried lyrical phrases and smooth, sustained harmonies among the strings and winds, including radiant solo passages by concertmaster Yumi Hwang Williams, made for a satisfying listening experience.
The pleasing score calls to mind a mélange of vivid imagery, from grand peaks and broad vistas to quiet lakes and mist refracted by sunlight.
Shifting gears, pianist André Watts delivered an absorbing interpretation of a more traditional favorite, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Dedicated to Nikolai Dahl, a hypnotist whose trance therapy helped save the Russian composer from alcoholism and depression, the expansive, tuneful work is replete with richly romantic themes.
Despite an oddly sluggish feel in the first and final movements, Watts and the CSO surely captured the work’s pervading soulfulness and rich, rhythmic turns of phrase.
After intermission, two symphonic works by French composers Maurice Ravel and Emmanuel Chabrier rounded out the program with both drama and levity.
In Ravel’s Suite No. 2 from “Daphnis and Chloé” – based on a pastoral romance by the Greek poet Longus – the orchestra and Colorado Symphony Chorus embraced the large-scale ballet score in a performance that evoked an immense fresco depicting daybreak followed by the lovers’ impassioned embrace and exhilarating dance.
It seems there’s no limit to Kahane’s ability to deliver on whatever musical complexity before him.
