RSO: A Splendid Concert to Start the Season!

Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra Concert Review: Saturday, October 6, 2018

The words and sentences in a playwright’s script are only words and sentences until a skilled actor knows the character he is playing so well that he is able to color those words and sentences with inflections and nuances that bring the character to life for his audience. A skilled music director must do the same thing, first gaining a personal awareness of the implicit emotional flow of a work’s notes and rhythms and then, with attention to rhythmical flexibility and expressive nuances, using his instrument (the orchestra) to bring the music to life for his audience.

With that in mind, we can understand why Yuga Cohler, the Ridgefield Symphony’s excellent new Music Director, whose introductory appearance last May required him to “conduct” works chosen by someone else, recently made it clear that he was thinking of the new season’s opening concert last Saturday evening at the Anne S. Richardson auditorium as his first “proper” concert – one in which he would be interpreting works that he himself had chosen.

Maestro Cohler’s selections for the occasion were Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C Major and Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, and he managed the whole evening, which ended with a very long standing ovation, sensitively and skillfully enough to justify rating it as a very “proper” concert.

Having heard (and also played) Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 countless times, I wasn’t expecting the very special treat that Maestro Cohler’s interpretation provided for me. His conducting is impressive both technically and visually, providing a second dimension to the sort of real virtuosity that (with both instrumentalists and conductors) involves musical taste and instrumental control in addition to technical mastery. Particularly in the first movement, but throughout as well, his sensitive awareness and communication of subtle inflections and nuances held my attention and brought the music to life in ways that I found very special.

Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra is both a modern musical masterpiece and a devilishly difficult work to play, requiring not only orchestral but also both individual instrumental and sectional virtuosity while flowing through a myriad of expressive moods that include both humor and despair before ending in a technical onrush of exuberant affirmation. Maestro Cohler handled it with aplomb, and the orchestra both gave it a creditable performance (with special kudos for a deserving brass section) and undoubtedly provided Maestro Cohler with additional insight concerning both what he can feel happy about and what he needs to remedy.

It was a splendidly proper concert – an enjoyable event that left me expectant of even better days ahead.

Reviewed by Courtenay Caublé