Pianist Jon Kimura Parker

A SHOUT AND SONIC WARHORSES AT NOVEMBER'S SRS CONCERT

While the Santa Rosa Symphony's November 11 concert was billed as “Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev,” the opening piece on the program departed from the Russian theme and was distinctly American: Valerie Coleman’s “Seven O’clock Shout.”

The work was inspired by a practice that spread from New York to other major cities during COVID: at 7:00 each evening during the lockdown people would appear on balconies, terraces, and at open windows to cheer and applaud (often accompanied by noisemakers ranging from air horns to pots and pans) the doctors, nurses and other public service workers combating the disease. In subsequent years after its live premiere it's become an anthem of cooperation and gratitude at numerous live performances nationwide.

Beginning with a plaintive trumpet solo from Robert Giambruno, it swelled to a brass fanfare followed by lush strings and winds. Over the next five minutes or so, while never derivative, it had moments reminiscent of Aaron Copland, not only the initial trumpet solo in his Quiet City, but also Appalachian Spring. As it built toward a climax, orchestra members clapped and shouted. It ended with exuberant hemiolas over a pulse of claves and a triumphant final chord.

There's a regrettable tendency among many to display their erudition by calling popular instrumental concertos “warhorses.” Tchaikovsky's B-flat Minor Concerto, Op. 23, has suffered more than its fair share of such opprobrium; so much so, in fact, that many concertgoers dismiss it as the Tchaikovsky concerto, unaware that it's only the first of three. Symphony orchestras have to the need to “put patrons in seats,” and it's works like this one that can fill the acoustically laudable, if sometimes gluteally challenging Weill Hall in the Green Music Center.

Such cavils aside, if anyone needs an example of real sophistication, they need look no further than to this concert’s soloist.

Canadian pianist Jon Kimura Parker, playing with the Santa Rosa Symphony, displayed technical mastery from the first volcanic chords that moved into a nuanced and sensitive interpretation. Changes in texture and mood during exchanges with the orchestra felt “just right.” Instead of the excessive rubatos, Mr. Parker was able to employ the technique of “playing on the front or the back of the beat” as is common in jazz, and conductor Francisco-Lecce Chong was interpretatively on board. The final scales of eighth-note octaves in both hands that conclude the first movement were played with such enthusiasm as to bring on enough applause to elicit a brief bow from him before proceeding with the Andantino semplice movement.

A lovely Kathleen Lane Reynolds flute solo from above muted strings introduced the lullaby-like first theme, echoed later by cellist Adelle-Akiko Kearns and stand mate Robin Bonnell. The prestissimo middle section of the movement provided a balletic contrast before the return of the theme for the final triple pianissmo ending.

Tchaikovsky based the first theme of the finale on a Ukrainian melody, and used other folk elements in its development, and there was the clarity in Mr. Parker’s running eighth-note triplets in the finale and later sixteenth notes, both in the liquid accompaniment in the second movement and in the rapid runs in the finale; deft pedaling left each note individually audible. The exuberant chromatic scale that ended the work propelled the audience to its feet an instant after the final chord. After a number of curtain calls, Mr. Stewart remarked that something simple and quiet might be appropriate, and as an encore played Scott Joplin's Solace. Here was a chance to use the rubatos and retards from which we were spared in the Tchaikovsky, and here they were entirely appropriate, as well as honoring Joplin's dictum that “ragtime should never be played too fast.”

The second large work of the evening was, in a sense, a new one. Prokofiev was commissioned, initially by the Kirov and then by the Bolshoi Ballet in 1935, to write some two and half hours of music for a new ballet based on Shakespeare's “Romeo and Juliet.” Thus, while he excerpted no less than three orchestral suites from the ballet (the second is the one most played), it wasn't until 1940 that the complete ballet premiered in Moscow.

For the Santa Rosa concert series, Mr. Lecce-Chong chose sections from all three suites to create a “Symphony from Romeo and Juliet,” using them to create the four movements of traditional symphonic form. The first, “Ballroom Dances,” incorporated the crashing brass dissonances, alternating with hushed strings, of “Montagues and Capulets” that normally begins the second suite, but then changed to the “Minuet” sequence before returning to what, in the ballet, was called “Dance of the Knights,” but in the Suite is part of “Montagues and Capulets.” The second movement, “The Balcony,” uses some of the scenes between Romeo and Juliet and has lush, almost cinematic, writing; the third, “Death in the Streets,” includes the “Death of Tybalt” and has some of the most eerie and exciting music of the entire ballet. The final movement, “The Graveyard,” is based on “Romeo at the Grave of Juliet” and alternates almost unbearably tragic chords with reminisces of the love scenes, but overlaid with dark forebodings, before finally dying away. There was a long moment of silence before the beginning of applause.

The orchestra’s playing and ensemble were splendid throughout.

The applause persisted to the point at which an encore seemed appropriate. In keeping with the tragic Romeo and Juliet theme, Mr. Lecce-Chong and the orchestra’s strings ended the evening with an arrangement of “Somewhere” from Bernstein's score for the Broadway Show “West Side Story.”