Orchestra 2001 plays Hindemith

Hindemith has never been one of my favorite composers. Much of his work strikes me as bloodless. The parts all work like they're supposed to, but the machine doesn't do anything interesting or moving.

Fortunately, Hindemith's output includes several striking exceptions, and James Freeman scheduled two of the best on the first half of Orchestra 2001's recent concert. Hindemith's Kammermusic for cello and its companion for piano spotlight two of the most dramatic instruments a composer can work with. Both pieces enhance the drama with orchestra effects that are unexpected, highly inventive, and sometimes completely off-the-wall.

Freeman's two soloists were both at the top of their form. Lori Barnet is a Washington, D.C., musician who has been one of Orchestra 2001's key musicians for a number of years; she always makes an impression when the cello takes center stage in an orchestral piece.

The cello sings

Barnet opened the Hindemith with a strong, singing introduction, and she produced another long cello song, interspersed with dramatic interactions with the orchestra, in the second movement. She dominated the action when the cello had the leading role, and she settled comfortably into a supporting role in the sections that let flamboyant instruments like the trumpet and the flute strut for a while.

The pianist Marcantonio Barone proved once again that he can approach almost any type of music with sensitive understanding.

Hindemith dubbed these pieces Kammermusic (chamber music) because he wanted to revive the German chamber performance tradition. He would have been delighted by the setting in Trinity Center. My seat in the third row placed me about 12 feet from the piano. The people in the front row could have helped Barone turn pages. I couldn't see his hands over the shoulders in front of me, but the intense concentration on his face created a visual accompaniment that was just as informative.

Bridegroom's challenge

In the second half, the program turned to two newer works: a 1999 group of Sephardic songs set by the highly successful American composer Roberto Sierra, and a 1964 group of folk songs from several countries set by the Italian composer Luciano Berio, who died in 2003 at the age of 78.

The Sephardic songs mostly dealt with the traditional male-female relationships, but their moods ranged from the bouncily hip-swinging to wild Moorish wailing. The last song stemmed from an odd Sephardic custom: The bridegroom had to stand outside the bride's door on their wedding night and sing until her parents fell asleep.

A love song? Really?

Berio's globetrotting folk song collection opened with two American classics, "I Wonder as I Wander" and "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair," and ended with an "Azerbaijan Love Song" that the soprano Julianne Baird declared "untranslatable." There even seems to be some doubt it was a love song.

In both pieces, the composers invested most of their creative thinking in the accompaniments. In her comments during the pre-concert discussion, Baird said the musicians had to do the really hard work. She was being modest, but most of the striking passages centered on instrumental flights like the touch of rustic fiddling that Igor Szwec and Lori Barnet added to one of Sierra's songs and the music for harp, clarinet and flute that accompanied Berio's version of "Black Is the Color," our American ode to ravishing brunettes.

About that pairing…

Julianne Baird added a nice touch of personable informality during both song groups, throwing in an occasional comment or translation in between songs and generally adding to the good-natured mood of the evening.

In his pre-concert comments, conductor James Freeman noted that the program fell into two unrelated halves and remarked that he didn't see why all the items on a program had to relate to a theme. The program was, in fact, titled "Hindemith Perspective and International Folk Songs."

If that seems like an odd juxtaposition, so be it. The two halves created a varied whole that produced a thoroughly enjoyable Saturday night outing. Orchestra 2001 even followed it with a reception that featured some of the best cream-filled cookies I've tasted.