The coda of any Florida Orchestra season is often a stirring affair, an emotional tug-and-pull to celebrate all the classic moments from the past eight months. This was the case last year, when the group closed with an epic performance of Mahler’s “Third Symphony,” and the year before, with another Mahler crown, the “Resurrection.” They still reverberate.
On May 31 at a sold-out Mahaffey Theater, the orchestra wrapped up its final Hough Family Foundation Masterworks program with two disparate but complementary pieces, joined by a fleet-fingered pianist, a pair of vocal soloists and The Master Chorale of Tampa Bay. TFO Music Director Michael Francis eschewed a Mahler triumvirate by offering Rachmaninoff’s evergreen “Piano Concerto No. 2,” with the Indonesian-born soloist Janice Carissa in her TFO debut. The second half belonged to the rarely heard “A Sea Symphony” of Vaughan Williams, an hour-long blend of symphony, oratorio and opera based on poems by Walt Whitman.
“It’s about the sea, and that’s one subject that joins everyone,’’ Francis said by phone last week. “It unites all of us.’’
Paula Pearson drove from Palm Harbor to be part of that unity, and to see her daughter Kelli sing in the chorus: “I’m so impressed how the musicians play and coordinate with the choir,’’ she said in the Mahaffey lobby. “The sound they make together is just beautiful.’’
Francis didn’t hold back about his own pleasure in creating art with this group: “I think what’s so amazing about this season is the incredible variety of the music and the mastery the musicians show whenever they take the stage. I’m very proud of the quality we have here.’’
Francis opened with one of the orchestra’s “mystery pieces,’’ a short work announced at the last minute. The choice was Verdi’s “Triumphal March” from “Aida,” a brassy celebration of military victory that allowed the chorus to bellow and clear its collective throat. The piano concerto followed, a piece loved for its late-romantic, rib-sticking emotionalism and soaring tunes. The 27-year-old Carissa — who made her professional debut at age 16 with the Philadelphia Orchestra — delivered her ideas with élan and urgency and wasn’t shy about injecting her own ideas into the ominous series of chords that open the work — which she played as arpeggios.
The performance of the Vaughan Williams must rank among the season’s more intriguing selections, considering the enormity of the forces and the challenge in uniting them into a single interpretive voice. The music is essentially a poetic kaleidoscope about the human relationship with the sea — with an elusive sonata-form development — and unfolds not unlike a 1930s Hollywood film score. Looking back, it joins a list of personal highlights that include:
• Concertmaster Jeffrey Multer as soloist in Dvořák’s neglected “Violin Concerto”
• John Adams’s minimalist masterpiece, “Harmonielehre”
• Mahler’s realization of the Beethoven “Ninth Symphony” and an orchestral adaptation of his “Grosse Fuge”
• Einojuhani Rautavaara’s “Cantus Arcticus” for orchestra and recorded bird songs
• The U.S. premiere of the orchestral version of Thierry Caens’ “Tribones” concerto for three trombones, featuring TFO soloists Joel Vaisse and Ross Holcombe, along with guest artist Amanda Stewart.
• A rapturous performance of Ravel’s “Daphnis” and “Chloe Suite”
• The always-riveting “Along the Appian Way” from Respighi’s “Pines of Rome”
• Leonard Bernstein’s chaotically atonal “Kaddish” symphony, performed in honor of the 80th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust.
Kurt Loft is a journalist and music critic who has covered classical music for various publications and arts groups for more than 40 years. A member of the Music Critics Association of North America, he lives in St. Petersburg.