MSO delivers satisfying ‘Feast’
By MICHELLE KINSEY Nov 16 REVIEW: Muncie Symphony Orchestra delivers satisfying ‘Feast’
By MICHELLE KINSEY • mkinsey@muncie.gannett.com • November 16, 2008
MUNCIE — It was a feast indeed.
Muncie Symphony Orchestra served up a delightful “Thanksgiving Feast” Saturday at Emens Auditorium that included an Aaron Copland appetizer and a heaping helping of Robert Vaughan Williams.
The concert opened with Copland’s “Tenderland Suite,” which features three movements from his “Tender Land" opera. The opera tells the story of a Midwestern in the mid-1930s.
The suite, which spotlights some of the happier times in the opera, oozed Americana.
The musicians did a fine job of painting a warm and inviting picture.
Led by Maestro Bohuslav Rattay, the musicians followed the suite with one of Vaughan Williams’s more popular concertos — this one for the tuba.
And if you were thinking that a tuba could not possible hold its own front and center, you would have been wrong. In the capable hands of Mark Mordue, the instrument shined, particularly during the third dance-like movement.
After intermission, the rest of the show belonged to Vaughan Williams’s "Dona Nobis Pacem." I don’t think you could have fit more performers on this stage. In addition to a full orchestra, the piece also featured Ball State University’s Concert and Chamber choirs as well as the community choir, Masterworks Chorale.
Based primarily on the poems of Walt Whitman, this was one of the most powerful MSO/choir collaborations I have seen in some time. And after a lengthy standing ovation at the end of the work, perhaps I was not alone in that assessment.
The choirs were simply magnificent and the soloists, soprano Mei Zhong and baritone Craig Priebe, were flawless. Although I will say that it was at times difficult to hear Zhong’s lovely voice over the orchestra.
There are a lot of big moments in this work and the MSO and the choirs — the men were particularly strong — handled them with conviction. The work, which centers on a great “plea for peace,” packs quite a punch. It fills you up, much like a good meal. Or in this case, a good “Thanksgiving Feast.”
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