It was with great excitement that I headed over to Ferguson Center to see the Virginia Symphony Orchestra (VSO) perform on Friday the 13th (wooooo): April 13th, 2007 at 10:30 am.  And who wouldn’t be excited, I was getting the opportunity to hear one of the top 40 classical hits of all times: Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.  Though I walked away impressed, it was not Pictures that was the highlight of the morning.

Let me start by saying, this is the perfect concert to go to if you are not really “into” classical music.  All of the compositions chosen for this concert are very rooted in reality, either telling a story with music or vividly describing a scene.  You can just close your eyes and clearly see pictures and characters unfold in front of you as if you were watching a movie (or in the case of Pictures: as if you were walking through an art exhibit).

 The first work was Cinderella Suite No. 1, an orchestral extraction from the famous ballet by Prokofiev.  Suite No. 1 (there are 3) takes us from the beginning of the well known story through “Midnight” the night of the ball.  As it is ballet and as it is Cinderella, there are many dance tunes.  You can easily imagine gorgeous flowing dresses and grand waltzes.  But as an orchestral extraction (nobody dancing), the piece becomes more of a tone poem, or a story told through music.  It is extremely easy to follow the story as the sisters bicker and argue in angular and harsh lines, or as the Fairy Godmother shows up offering hope.  The emotions that the original story contains are ones that we really connect to.  Listening to VSO perform I was brought through all of those emotions:  Curiosity, wonderment, and slight foreboding of what is ahead, excitement and hope when everything seems to turn your way, majestic thrill of the soul when you have everything you want, and that creeping or sometimes sudden darkness when everything changes.  That demoralizing life-changing event in this work is the clock tolling midnight.  This is represented very literally with a wood block, chimes and strings playing fast and angular lines to raise tension, taking a frenetic pace that drives to the end: the toll of midnight.

The conductor, Rossen Milanov, showed great versatility

 The second of the three chosen compositions was an actual tone poem by Dvorák, The Noonday Witch.  This is also a very easily followed story of a child annoying his hard-working mother, and the mother responding by threatening him with a story of The Noonday Witch.  Unfortunately, come noon, the witch actually comes.  The mother faints and is woken up by her husband with her child dead in her arms.  One of the neatest things about this composition is that you can almost hear the speech patterns of the different characters, including that of the mother chiding her child and the witch’s demands. It's actually a really cool piece.

As is the case with much of Dvorák, the music is heavily influenced by Slavonic folk music.  From the very beginning you can hear the Slavonic folk dance with which Milanov seems to excel.  In fact he handles Dvorák’s orchestration and unique sound expertly. 

His interpretation of this piece could be considered a definitive example

 The second half of the concert consists of the 10 movements of Pictures at an Exhibition.  Originally a piano piece, this was written by Mussorgsky as a tribute to a dear artist friend who died.  Like the other two compositions, this one is music describing events.  In this case, it is of himself walking through an exhibition showing his friend’s art.  It starts off with his impression of the promenade and continues with a movement dedicated to 10 different "pictures".  Each movement does a wonderful job of helping you imagine what the painting looks like and much more (ie. What is happening in the painting, what people in the painting are feeling, and most importantly, what Mussorgsky is feeling as he is looking at the painting).  It is wonderful, touching, majestic, and amazing. This arrangement for symphonic orchestra was written by Ravel and is considered the best because of its amazing use of color and texture to enhance Mussorgsky’s score.

 As Pictures at an Exhibition started, I noted a forgivable crack by the trumpet in the opening line.  Unfortunately, this heralded

a series of mistakes

 The ending of Pictures started to climax with The Hut on Fowl’s Legs and continues onto The Great Gate of Kiev.  The concert was not simply flawless from this point on, it was breathtaking.  It just kept building and building until the last moments where Milanov masterfully took his time with the final tempo and really brought out the majesty of the score and the magnificent sound of the orchestra.  You may have heard the ending to this very popular piece on your stereo, but you have heard nothing until you have heard it played live by an orchestra as outstanding as VSO. 

 Now onto what really impressed me with this concert.  The VSO lower brass was phenomenal:  powerful, intense, and musical.  This is a concert where the low brass gets to have a lot of fun, and they do.  Furthermore, the violins were incredibly tight and very musical throughout.  All three of these pieces end very strongly and so does the orchestra:  The endings of each piece were played extremely well.   As you can guess I was also blown away by Milanov’s handling of Dvorák, and I look forward to hearing his interpretation of other of Dvorák’s works.

 As I said, this is definitely a great concert for the newbie concert goer.  I had the pleasure to note the reactions of younger children who attended the concert and sat in front of me.  One of the images that was embedded in my head, was that of a girl who was no more than 6 years old who sat, literally, on the edge of her seat enthralled for all of The Noonday Witch.

This concert plays on April 14th at Chrysler and April 15th again at Ferguson.  If you get a chance to see this, do not pass it up.