A little more than two years ago, English conductor Edward Gardner made listeners sit up and take notice when he made his debut with the Colorado Symphony.
This past weekend in Boettcher Concert Hall, he returned for another round of adventuresome music- making, and the results were equally thrilling.
Gardner is a passionate, perceptive conductor with surprisingly well- developed musical instincts and poise for being 33 years old. He knows what he wants in an interpretation and how to get it.
He chose an all-Scandinavian program but passed over the usual favorites for works that had not been performed in at least 20 years by the orchestra, and, in one case, never played at all.
That it was a daring program was made clear Saturday evening by the abundance of empty seats. But the intrepid listeners who did attend got to hear one of the most rewarding concerts of the season.
After opening with a rich, expressive take on Jean Sibelius’ Suite from “Karelia,” Op. 11, the orchestra turned to a 1977 work by Einojuhani Rautavaara. Nearing 80, he is another composer from Finland, a country that has produced a supply of musical talent well out of proportion with its size.
Rautavaara’s Violin Concerto is totally enthralling, managing to be so much at once — stark, otherworldly, even menacing at times, but always intriguing and alluringly atmospheric in its way.
The solo violin traverses amazingly diverse musical terrain, from ultra-high notes at the beginning to sections of repeated passages of pinched discordance to the relentless, pell-mell opening of the second movement.
Guest soloist Elmar Oliveira handled all the knotty challenges the composer threw at him with unflappable precision and compelling musicality. It was a dazzling performance — one of the best I’ve heard him give.
“Actually, I liked that,” said one listener as he walked out at intermission, sounding a little astonished at his own reaction to the contemporary piece.
The evening’s highlight, though, came in the second half when Gardner and the orchestra combined for a powerful, at times transcendent interpretation of Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4, Op. 29, “The Inextinguishable.”
It was written in 1914-16, when World War I was in full force, and the horrors of that bloody conflict inevitably colored this work. But in it, the Danish composer refused to give up on the indomitability of the human spirit, hence the work’s sobriquet.
Gardner vividly drew forth all the epic work’s essential elements — raw, restless energy, piercing bursts of violence and poignant moments of vulnerability — and combined them in a unified, meaningful whole.
Make no mistake, Gardner is a conductor with a big future ahead of him. Here’s hoping he makes regular return visits to Denver. Maybe it’s even time for the symphony to bring back the post of principal guest conductor. Hint, hint.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
