Tonight’s water-themed Lancaster Symphony Orchestra concert was a marvel from beginning to end. Just two works were on the program: Composer’s Award recipient Jennifer Higdon’s “river sings a song to trees” from “City Scape” and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 1, “A Sea Symphony.”
Higdon’s work contained extraordinary color effects derived from special percussion such as a water gong — a gong raised and lowered in a tank of water while being struck – and a crotale placed on the edge of one of the tympani and struck as the percussionist moves the pedal of the tympani. (Higdon explained the effects before the performance started.) These were not mere novelties, but helped capture the feeling of flowing water, of wind moving in the leaves. Shimmering strings sometimes evoked the hum of cicadas, other times the rush of water. At one point a folk-like melody emerged, at another the string melody broke into shards, as if it had become light in the trees.
The Sea Symphony was a real triumph for the orchestra, conductor Stephen Gunzenhauser, the Lancaster Symphony Chorus, interim chorusmaster Mark Williams, and the two soloists, baritone Philip Lima and soprano Evelyn Santiago. The orchestra played extremely well throughout, the chorus sounded great, and Lima and Santiago were wonderful as the embodiment of the self and soul, voyaging out on the mysterious sea of Walt Whitman’s poetry. Gunzenhauser led a magnificently coherent (or coherently magnificent), dynamically varied performance, capturing all the moods of this enigmatic piece and getting that Vaughan Williams sound just right.
The performances continue Saturday at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 7:30 p.m. at the Fulton Opera House.
