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Reviews
Pro Arte opens season on an up beat
By T. J. Medrek
The gorgeous fall weather and the Head of the Charles
didn't keep the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra's loyal audience
away from Sanders Theatre in Cambridge yesterday afternoon.
The occasion was the farewell concert of Principal Conductor
Gisèle Ben-Dor.
The music was unfailingly upbeat, from the sparkling
Rossini overture at the beginning through the concluding
First Symphony of Beethoven, a work brimming with exuberance
and humor. And at the end, Pro Arte Executive Director
Ryan Fleur announced that the orchestra had voted Ben-Dor
— who joined the orchestra as music director in
1991 — the title conductor emerita, and hoped she'd
come back often as a guest.
Ben-Dor said a simple "Thank you all" and
walked offstage with her characteristic no-nonsense
stride, as someone in the audience shouted, "We
love you," as if speaking for everyone in the hall.
The conductor's departure has been in the works since
she gave up the director's title and became principal
conductor. As Fleur said, "We knew we wouldn't
be able to keep you here forever," and they were
right. And with this concert, the first of Pro Arte's
season, Ben-Dor showed us why.
Her firmly planted feet supporting an upper body in
constant motion, Ben-Dor led this fine group of players
with energy, confidence and the kind of musicality in
which every note, every phrase means something. Nothing
is just played - it's performed.
That's how she made the 199-year-old Beethoven sound
as new as the U.S. premiere of Almas Serkebayev's "Shertpe
Kuy." Based on Kazakh fold music and with a beat
meant to imitate trotting horses, the Serkebayev came
off as an immediately appealing kind of Eastern hoe-down.
The composer, originally from the former U.S.S.R., lives
in Randolph and was present for the performance.
Of the two Boston premieres on the program, the finer
was Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas' 1932 "Colorines,"
a vivid evocation of the chaos and exuberance —
and, yes, noise — of urban life with a lovely,
lyrical woodwind section at its center.
Heitor Villa-Lobos' 1956 Harmonica Concerto, however,
seemed pretty ordinary, except for the oddity of the
solo instrument, played here by Robert Bonfiglio. Nothing
if not a showman, the square-jawed, Fabio-haired harmonica
virtuoso finished off the program's first half by thanking
Ben-Dor and the orchestra, pointing out his mom in the
audience (after all, his name is "good son"
in Italian), playing three encores and making sure we
knew he'd be in the lobby during intermission to sign
programs and CDs.
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