Spokesman.com: "Hailstork’s 'Fanfare' is a skillfully written icebreaker that provided members of the brass section plenty of opportunity to display their considerable chops."

Adolphus Hailstork

The Spokesman-Review

Spokane, Washington

September 20, 2021

By Larry Lapidus For The Spokesman-Review

At a point when it still appeared possible that the Spokane Symphony might be able to start its season in September 2020, music director James Lowe considered programming the Symphony No. 2 of Gustav Mahler, the “Resurrection” Symphony, for the inaugural concert. As we know, the orchestra and its audience had to wait an additional 12 months, until Saturday night, for that concert to take place.

When it did, the music it offered was both truer to what people have endured and more inspiring in thinking of what remains to endure than Mahler’s great symphony, which describes mankind’s rebirth into a life free from sorrow and death. Instead, Lowe and his orchestra presented a program that guides to find joy and fulfillment in life while acknowledging its tragic nature.

The three works of the weekend program – the “Fanfare on Amazing Grace (2011),” of American composer Adolphus Hailstork (1941-); the Violin Concerto in D minor Op. 47 (1905), of the Finnish Jean Sibelius (1865-1957); and Johannes Brahms’ (1833-1897) Symphony No. 2 in D major Op. 73 (1877) – project the qualities that have accounted for the continued existence of the Spokane Symphony through this period of unprecedented peril.

***

Hailstork’s “Fanfare” is a skillfully written icebreaker that provided members of the brass section plenty of opportunity to display their considerable chops.

After 90 seconds of joyous noise, the strings enter with a swelling statement of the great English hymn. The impact of programming the piece was greatly increased by Lowe’s decision to call on the magnificent resources of the Spokane Symphony Chorale to precede it with a brief but deeply affecting rendition of the hymn.

Leading the group was superb director Kristina Ploeger-Hekmatpanah. As the auditorium lighting dimmed, members of the chorale spread out across the balcony. I am sure that chills were not confined to my spine alone, as their voices, pure and solemn, emerged from the darkness to remind of the ultimate source of the energy that had brought everyone together.