Chestnut Hill resident Cristian Macelaru served as a guest conductor for the Philadelphia Orchestra at its Verizon Hall concerts from Feb. 7-9. (Photo by Adriane White)

by Michael Caruso

Chestnut Hill will be a classical music lover’s paradise Sunday, Feb. 24. Both the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Chestnut Hill, will host musical events of great interest and import.

Artists-in-residence at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church, the Fairmount String Quartet will be joined by pianist Ken Lovett in recital Sunday at 3 p.m. Their program will feature Beach’s Quartet for Strings in One Movement, Opus 89; Mozart’s String Quartet in E-flat major, K. 428; and Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F minor, Opus 34. Lovett is currently the organist at the Church and was previously the organist and choir director at the Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Chestnut Hill.

Admission to the concert, which will take place in the Church’s main sanctuary, is free, but a donation of $25 for adults and $5 for students is suggested.

Andrew Kotylo, the newly hired music director at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Chestnut Hill, will lead his first Choral Evensong Sunday, Feb. 24, at 5 p.m. Music by Radcliff, Dyson and King will be sung. The service will be followed by a reception in the church hall.

As I’m planning to attend both events, I’m also hoping to see both sets of pews filled with as many local music lovers as possible.

GUEST CONDUCTORS

The past two weekends have seen and heard two guest conductors lead the Philadelphia Orchestra in concerts in the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall. Former associate conductor and continuing Chestnut Hill resident Cristian Macelaru mounted the ensemble’s podium Feb. 7, 8 & 9; former Los Angeles Philharmonic music director and noted composer Esa-Pekka Salonen led the Philadelphians Feb. 14, 15 & 16. Both conductors chose programs that played to their individual artistic strengths, and both elicited excellent playing from the Orchestra.

Macelaru’s concerts were subtitled “Viva Espana.” Although only two of the four composers represented on the program were actually Spanish, all four of the works sported a Spanish flavor. Emmanuel Chabrier’s “Espana” opened the concert and gave it its moniker, while Maurice Ravel’s “Rapsodie espagnole” brought it to a sultry finale. In between these scores by Frenchman, Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto andaluz” and excerpts from Manuel de Falla’s “El amor brujo” were both the “real thing” and dazzlingly appealing, to boot.

Chabrier’s short tone poem projects a suave sonic portrait of Spain as seen through the eyes of a sophisticated and (perhaps) envious Frenchman. There’s lots of glitter in the score but not a great deal of emotional intensity. However, whatever Chabrier’s music may lack in Spanish intensity is more than made up for by the silken beauty of its orchestration. Macelaru elicited playing that was characterized by rhythmic vitality and exquisite balances of timbre and texture.

Ravel, whose mother was from the Basque country that straddles Spain and France and whose father was French-Swiss, came to his affinity for the Spanish flair in music naturally. It shows in “Rapsodie espagnole.” The score doesn’t so much “pulse” with rhythm as it “pulsates” with throbbing emotions. Just beneath the surface of Ravel’s glistening orchestration, one senses that an explosion of uncontrolled feelings is about to burst its constraints. Once again, Macelaru drew playing from the Philadelphians that was both sonically beautiful and viscerally potent.

The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet played the solo parts in Rodrigo’s “Concierto andaluz.” This tonal portrait of Spain’s most southern region is appealing on first hearing, and the four players gave its solo parts an exemplary reading.

Once again, Andalusia was the regional inspiration for “El amor brujo” (Love the Magician), with Falla catching the sounds and senses of his homeland with particular precision. The Philadelphians, under Macelaru’s forceful yet sensitive guiding hand, gave it a masterful reading Saturday evening, Feb. 9.

FINNISH MAESTRO

Finnish-born Esa-Pekka Salonen can accurately be dubbed the “Once and Future Music Director of California.” He led the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1992 until 2009, expanding America’s “Big Five Orchestras” of Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, Boston and New York into a newly minted “Big Seven” with the inclusion of the LA Phil and the San Francisco Symphony. Amazingly, Salonen will become San Francisco’s music director in 2020, succeeding the retiring Michael Tilson Thomas, the man responsible for making that orchestra one of the world’s greatest symphonic ensembles.

Although Salonen’s program Saturday evening had nothing to do with Finland or any other part of Nordic Europe, it nonetheless allowed him to put forward his expertise with scores that either led into the modern repertoire of the 20th century or that were securely situated within the canon of those works. The program opened with Richard Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra,” then featured after intermission Bela Bartok’s Viola Concerto and the Suite from the ballet, “The Miraculous Mandarin.”

Strauss took the Wagnerian chromatic harmonic idiom to new heights with his series of tone poems written during the final decade of the 19th century. “Zarathustra” at times sounds like a “modulating machine” as it obliterates even a notion of major/minor tonal centers after its opening measures and until its concluding passages. In between, listeners are treated to a never-ending spectrum of thematic manipulations that dazzle the ear and captivate the mind. The piece is a spectacular workout for an orchestra like the Philadelphia, whose reputation for performing such masterpieces was founded by Leopold Stokowski and perfected by Eugene Ormandy, its two music directors from 1912 until 1980. Its current maestro, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, has returned the ensemble to its glory days. Salonen made use of its pyrotechnical splendor to give a sold-out Verizon Hall a rendition that drew a standing ovation from the audience and seated applause by the players, themselves – almost unheard of before intermission. The appreciation was well deserved.

After the interval, the Orchestra’s principal violist, Choon-Jin Chang, gave a fine reading to Bartok’s Viola Concerto. Left unfinished at his death in 1945, the score was completed by Tibor Serly and has become a daunting standard in its repertoire.

Salonen brought the concert to a scintillating close with a magnificent rendition of the Suite from “The Miraculous Mandarin.” If any proof were needed that the improved acoustics in Verizon Hall are, indeed, improved, then Saturday evening’s performance was that aural proof. Salonen and the Philadelphians made Verizon come alive with shimmering timbres and pounding rhythms.

You can contact NOTEWORTHY at Michael-caruso@comcast.net. To read more of NOTEWORTHY visit chestnuthilllocal.com/Arts/Noteworthy