No one in the past few years has had a stronger run as guest conductor with the Colorado Symphony than Edward Gardner, who returned Friday for another first-rate turn on the Denver podium.
Gardner is trumpeted in this month’s issue of BBC Music Magazine as the savior of the English National Opera, where he has been music director since 2007. And he has shown himself to be equally adept in orchestral repertoire.
The Colorado Symphony has not announced the candidates it is considering to replace Jeffrey Kahane as music director, but the English conductor should be high on the list.
To support Gardner’s case, look no further than Friday’s concert. It culminated with a superlative version of Ludwig van Beethoven’s exuberant Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, that compelled listeners to sit up and listen anew to this familiar work.
This was a smartly conceived, high-energy interpretation, with Gardner paying dutiful attention to dynamics, articulations and balance. There were high points aplenty, from the nuanced, unusually stirring second movement to the spirited finale.
The concert’s centerpiece, though, was Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19, which was written during the tumult of the communist revolution. As hauntingly affecting as it is, there is nothing pretty about this spare, often forbidding work.
Leila Josefowicz, a superb young violinist, has a special knack for modern and contemporary repertoire. She seemed especially in her element here, cutting to the emotional core of this daunting work with an intense, incisive, full-on performance.
Right from her long, opening solo — melancholic, nervous and unsettled — she displayed knockout technique and a suitably restrained yet highly effective expressiveness. Filling out the rest of the first movement were scampering, sometimes mad-dash runs, manic pizzicatos and a dizzying final foray in the violin’s uppermost register.
Gardner proved to be an able partner, deftly supporting her playing and expertly shaping an overall take that was darkly spellbinding.
Modest Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” began the program.
The concert will be repeated at 7:30 p.m. today.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
