Press Release
New World interpretation of Britain's Victorian eraPeruvian-born maestro takes the orchestra through a spirited rendition of Elgar's Enigma Variations
From April 24, 2006
Houston Chronicle
By Charles Ward
Can Russian orchestras really play Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue? Can American symphonies really catch the spirit of Viennese waltzes?
The question Friday as the Houston Symphony welcomed Peruvian-born Miguel Harth-Bedoya for his debut was how Sir Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations would fare.
Very well - up to the point where nationalism, or national soul, intrudes into the world of performance.
As music director of the Fort Worth Symphony, the American-trained Harth-Bedoya has established himself as a rising star by ratcheting up its artistic side - increasing the orchestra's size and season, and encouraging the esprit de corps that inevitably produces superior musicmaking.
With the Houston Symphony, he was a charming, take-control maestro, gaining well-shaped interpretations with incisive ideas and crisp technique.
Harth-Bedoya immediately gave Friday's skimpy Jones Hall audience a taste of his flair for communication with his introduction to Last Round by Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov. (In 2005 at Santa Fe Opera, Harth-Bedoya led the composer's expanded version of Ainadamar, based on the life of Federico García Lorca.)
Golijov intended Last Round as a musical goodbye to the great Argentine tango composer Astor Piazzolla, who died in 1992 of complications from a stroke.
The first movement presented an abstraction of the tango, laying down its rhythmic and essential harmonies, yet seldom revealing the elements in baldly recognizable form.
The second movement was a hazy take on a romantic ballad - My Beloved Buenos Aires by Carlos Gardel.
The music was not terribly substantial - except for the deep poignancy that crept up so suddenly at the end - but the strings-only orchestra gave Harth-Bedoya a glowing performance that had the right insolence, then sadness.
Cohen's symphony debutThe acclaimed Brazilian pianist Arnaldo Cohen also made his symphony debut, giving a glittering account of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2.
Cohen left a searing memory when he made his American recital debut at the University of Houston's International Piano Festival in 1991.
Surprisingly, though, he's only been here once since (for the UH's Texas Music Festival in 1995).
Some pianists toss technically difficult music easily while still letting listeners know it's hard stuff.
In Chopin's outer movements, Cohen played with such fleetness and fluency that he seemed almost unchallenged.
But he performed the arching melodies and lacy decorations with flair and, in the single middle movement, found a sharp-edged mysteriousness that grew more and more captivating.
On many levels, Harth-Bedoya and the orchestra gave an excellent account of Elgar's Enigma Variations (1899), one of the relatively few works of Britain's Victorian era to become part of the standard orchestral repertoire.
Each variation had the right spirit - from sombre to spirited to spritelike. Themes and ideas were crisply articulated. The shape and beauty came across well.
But it was very much a New World interpretation - crisp and efficient, almost managerial in its expertness - rather than one oozing with essential Victorian rectitude.
Several times more sombre moments needed a seamless regalness to convey the restrained monumentality so characteristic of much British music and life of Enigma's era.