When Lucas Richman, music director and conductor for the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, chose the program for Sunday’s concert, he couldn’t have known that world events and personal losses would collide in late November to send many musicians and concertgoers into the Collins Center for the Arts numb and grieving.
The attacks in Paris, the vacationers taken hostage at a hotel in Mali and the passing Saturday of a former concertmaster for the Boston Symphony Orchestra — a mentor to guest violinist Elena Urioste — individually seemed overwhelming. But coming one on top of the other as they did, they were spiritually devastating for many.
In his opening remarks Sunday, Richman quoted his mentor Leonard Bernstein, who said after the assassination of JFK: “This will be our response to violence: To make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”
That is exactly what the Bangor symphony and Urioste did Sunday.
The overture to Franz Joseph Haydn’s oratorio, “Il Ritorno di Tobia,” was sweet and joyful. A reminder of music’s ability to soothe the soul.
Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, Franz Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony,” sounded like the clashing philosophies raging throughout the world today. The composer’s constant switching from major to minor keys, then back again, made it seem like the instruments and sections of the orchestra were having a heated, but non-violent, conversation about the state of the world — the way people with very different views should be able to express themselves rather than with bullets and bombs.
And then there was Urioste, who performed the Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra by Ludwig von Beethoven with a stunning exactitude shrouded in grief for her mentor, Joseph Silverstein, and deep gratitude for the time she shared with him. Silverstein died in Boston at the age of 83 less than 12 hours before Sunday’s concert. As an encore, Urioste played “Estrellita” by Manuel Ponce and dedicated it to her teacher and mentor.
Over the past decade, the symphony nearly without fail has pulled itself up by its musical bootstraps to meet guest artists on their level. That was evident when the orchestra and Urioste performed one the most exquisite pieces of classical music ever written with healing grace and inspired elegance. Composed in 1806, the concerto, in the hands of the right soloist and orchestra as it was Sunday, still has the power to dazzle an audience.
Under Richman’s direction, both the musicians individually and the orchestra as a whole have found in well-known pieces such as the Schubert and the Beethoven performed Sunday a greater depth than they’ve offered concertgoers in the past. Under this maestro’s baton, music has the power to soothe, illuminate and heal the world, at least for a little while.
The whole concert was dedicated to Charles “Chick” Rauch, who served three terms as the president of the BSO’s Board of Directors. Urioste’s performance was underwritten by his wife, Esther Rauch, to celebrate his 90th birthday.
The Bangor Symphony Orchestra will perform Mahler’s “Titan” at 3 p.m. Jan. 24 at the Collins Center for the Arts. For information, call 942-5555 or visit bangorsymphony.org.