Thomas Wilkins
Drew Neneman
September 22, 2018
Review: Omaha Symphony opens season with triumphant night of Beethoven, Bernstein
What fate destroys, faith renews.
This conflict and comfort were the center of the Omaha Symphony’s season-opening concert on Friday night at the Holland Center.
Almost
250 years after Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth, during the centenary year
of Leonard Bernstein, the orchestra presented three works by the two
composers meant to light up Omaha’s imagination on the topics of
mortality, destiny and how art can express each. Music Director Thomas
Wilkins conducted.
The
evening opened with the overture to Beethoven’s only opera, “Fidelio.”
Bleak at the beginning, the overture quickly becomes a high-energy trip
along the border of romantic and classical era styles. The opera itself
is still contested as a successful piece of drama. But like everything
by Beethoven there is something worth treasuring within it, and this
overture displays some of the finest attributes of the larger work.
Tremendous texture and lively melody complement the early moments of
dark foreshadowing.
The
second feature of the program was Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2, “The Age
of Anxiety.” Inspired by W.H. Auden’s 1947 poem of the same name,
Bernstein’s 1949 symphonic work guides the listener along a single
evening’s discussion of existence and purpose had by three men and a
woman at a Manhattan bar.
Bernstein wrote the larger musical work for
much the same reason Auden composed the poem: The 20th century had
changed the way multiple generations experienced God, faith and purpose
in the wake of two world wars, a global economic transformation and the
onset of the nuclear age. After a tortured opening theme, the characters
debate, dream about, grieve, celebrate and ultimately renew their
belief in humanity’s purpose.
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