As winter on Sunday refused to acknowledge the change in seasons outside the Collins Center for the Arts in Orono, the Bangor Symphony Orchestra celebrated spring in a beautiful and raucous concert culminating with “The Rite of Spring,” a huge orchestral undertaking.
The snowstorm kept about 40 percent of ticketholders at home, including many who are bussed to the Collins Center from assisted living facilities in Greater Bangor and the midcoast. Those who couldn’t make it to the concert will be able to stream the performance for free beginning Friday through April 10 at watch.bangorsymphony.org, according to Executive Director Renia Shterenberg.
The concert opened with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture and concluded with Igor Stravinsky’s ballet “The Rite of Spring.” The works of two female French composers — Lili Boulanger and Cecile Chaminade — were sandwiched in between.
The orchestra looked cramped with 84 musicians on stage in the concert hall compared to the 54 who performed at the Feb. 1 concert, but the sound created by all those instruments was gloriously rich and emotionally compelling under the direction of Music Director and Conductor Lucas Richman.
Rimsky-Korsakov was a mentor and father figure to Stravinsky so dovetailing the program with these works honors both composers. Rimsky-Korsakov composed the Russian Easter Overture from 1887 to 1888. Based on liturgical chants, the composer “evokes the atmosphere of Orthodox worship, without attempting to recreate it directly,” according to the program notes. The orchestra perfectly captured all the reverence and exuberance of the piece.
Stravinsky’s ballet, which is about a pagan ritual in which a young woman dances herself to ensure that spring arrives, premiered in Paris in 1913. The music was so unlike anything the audience had heard before that a riot broke out, Richman told the audience Sunday.
The symphony has performed Stravinsky’s work at least twice in the last three and a half decades. Werner Torkanowsky programmed it in 1992 but died of cancer before it was performed. Toshi Shimada conducted instead.
Almost a decade later, Christopher Zimmerman, who was music director from 1994 until 2001, conducted “The Right of Spring.” Zimmerman, who leads the symphony orchestras in Fairfax, Virginia, and Fargo-Moorhead, North Dakota, often programmed work by the Russian composer.
The Bangor Symphony wrung every drop of visceral intensity from the notes on Sunday. The music rolled over the audience like waves crashing against the rocks at Thunder Hole in Acadia National Park. The word most used to describe the concert as it ended was, “Wow!”
Boulanger’s brief but lovely “Of A Spring Morning” evoked images of green shoots pushing their way through the remnants of a snowstorm and the opening of purple crocuses. Tragically, the composer died in 1918 at the age of 24.
The “Callirhoe, Orchestra Suite,” is a collection of music from Chaminade’s comic opera that premiered in 1988. “The suite distills material from the stage work into a sequence of orchestral movements that balance lyrical charm with formal control,” the program notes said.
The program shone a spotlight on the orchestra without guest soloists. The Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky are heavy lifts for any conductor and musicians. The Bangor Symphony Orchestra adroitly and expertly captured all the nuance and boldness of those challenging pieces and assured concertgoers that spring is on its way.
The final concert of the season will be “Our American Story,” featuring the works of Joan Tower, Aaron Copland and George Gershwin at 3 p.m. April 26 at the Collins Center for the Arts. For more information, visit bangorsympony.org or call 207-581-1755.