VSO summer concerts more than pops

By ED BARNA Correspondent

Soggy terrain sent attendees indoors to picnic on the concrete floor of Middlebury College’s hockey rink and banks of lights around the stage gave everyone an idea of what it means to be in the limelight. In the end, love conquered all.

“From Vermont with Love” is the title for the 16th summer “Pops” tour, which will continue through Sunday with concerts in Grafton, Shelburne, Randolph and Stowe, all at 7:30 p.m.

VSO Associate Conductor Anthony Princiotti took that heading as an opportunity, not a restriction. “Our theme this year is ‘Love and Music,’” he said, “which gives us a lot of options for playing great music from years past.”

The pieces he chose again and again showed a pattern of boisterous passages alternating with quieter, more romantic interludes — even the Tchaikovsky “1812 Overture,” whose climactic cannonades traditionally end VSO summer programs. That gave different sections of the orchestra chances to stand out, from the percussion to the piccolos.

The summer VSO team seems to have melded together as a group that genuinely enjoys the more lighthearted summer style, Broadway musicals and all. As a result, they gave a championship performance that seemed to fit right in with all the Middlebury College national championship sports banners on the walls of the Kenyon Arena.

The ability to create a crescendo in a couple of measures, the ability to switch directions on a semiquaver, the ability to get the dynamics just right from the first note — it was as if the VSO was functioning as a chamber group. Of course, there are urban classical music fans who can make comparisons of orchestra size and might put the VSO in that category just by the numbers.

Special mention ought to be made of the trumpet section — Andrew Sorg, Tom Bergeron, Olivia Malin — particularly their work in the brass-intensive “Procession of the Nobles” in Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “Mlada.” It’s the name of a female spirit, said Princiotti, whose description of the plot of the Smetana opera “The Bartered Bride,” from which they did three dances, would seem to apply to “Mlada” as well: “It’s almost impossible to describe — beyond human understanding, as far as I can tell.”

Princiotti has warmed up and loosened up — or perhaps he just decided to let it go for the tour. For those close enough, his spirited conducting style was highly entertaining, more like dancing and acting out than just keeping the tempo and volume controls adjusted.

One quick video clip: In anticipation of a passage that depended on one member of the orchestra, he put his hands together as if in prayer rather than giving directions. Then, completely satisfied, he just folded them together and beamed.

Princiotti has shown a knack for putting subtlety into his programs along with entertainment. This one begins with an ending, prefiguring the backstory of the “1812 Overture” — Saint-Saens’ “Bacchanale” from “Samson and Delilah.”

Bacchus, you will remember, was a pagan god of drinking. The “Bacchanale” is in fact the final act of the Saint-Saens opera, in which the triumphant Philistines exhibit the blinded Samson, only to find he his strength has grown back with his hair when he ends their feast by (cue Cecil B. DeMille here) pushing apart the building’s pillars.

Just so, the seemingly unstoppable Napoleon gets his comeuppance in Moscow, where the bells ring and cannons thunder to mark his army’s collapse.

The other numbers on the program are the wedding march from Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” medleys from “Guys and Dolls” (Loesser/Custer) and “Oklahoma” (Rodgers/Hammerstein) and, climaxing the first and longer part of the program, Sarasate’s “Carmen Fantasy on Tunes by Bizet.”

Probably some of the concert-goers came mainly to hear Esther Kim, already a violinist of international stature whose appearances in Vermont doubtless owe much to her master tutor being VSO Music Director Jamie Laredo.

The Sarasate piece is ideal for her: a violin prodigy doing a piece by a violin prodigy — both had their first big concert at age 8 — conducted by a violinist.

The greatest instrumentalist, like the greatest athletes, can help restore faith in humanity by displaying talents that would strain credulity except that in person they are undeniable. Kim’s confidence and precision and flair in the super-soprano register was like the aplomb of an Olympic gymnast turning in a perfect score on the balance beam.

But there wasn’t a hint of grandstanding in Kim’s playing or in her demeanor before and after. She’s just a young, still-learning, hard-working violin player, who was doubtless dissatisfied with her initial effort in Middlebury and will redouble her intensity during the succeeding concerts.

Fireworks follow the summer concerts — bangs after Pops, as one person put it. These would take place rain or shine, said an announcer.

They shone. Making fireworks can be an art — go to the Montreal fireworks festival if you don’t believe it — and this year’s salutes include some nifty effects that weren’t used last year.

To take one example, there was a massed red, white and blue Roman candle shot — flaming colored balls, not bursts. Patriotism is always an underlying theme of the summer series, and in a tough year for arts groups, it would be painless Vermont patriotism to get to the VSO.