HYANNIS The near-capacity crowd was animated as usual, but there was an underlying pervasive sense that last weekend's Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra program carried an emotional import well beyond its musical content.
These were to be the last concerts Royston Nash would conduct as the orchestra's artistic director, ending a 27-year tenure that had seen remarkable strides in the 85-member ensemble.
Symphony Orchestra,
WHERE: Barnstable High School Performing Arts Center, Hyannis
And, although the much-beloved maestro had agreed to lead three summer pops concerts and return to conduct the first three programs in 2008, the die was cast.
In September, a new artistic director will take over at the helm, and Nash will hence be known as the laureate music director, an honorary title bestowed on him at a post-concert ceremony.
Saturday night's audience greeted the maestro with prolonged and vigorous applause as he approached the podium to begin a diversified program of well-chosen works by Otto Nicolai, Ferde Grofe and Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky his exciting and challenging Violin Concerto in D-Major, Op. 35.
Violinist Miriam Fried a distinguished soloist who has appeared with major orchestras here and abroad thoroughly impressed the audience with her artistic integrity, maturity of interpretation, and technical command.
While at first sounding too tightly controlled and forced, Fried gradually relaxed her grip and allowed her superb "old-school" training and profound musicianship to shine through.
Brought from Israel to the United States as a prodigy, she had studied with noted master teachers Ivan Galamian and Joseph Gingold, and, in 1971, she became the first woman to win the prestigious Queen Elizabeth International Violin Competition.
At the end of the dynamic, emotionally compelling first movement, Tchaikovsky's wildly virtuosic cadenzas capped by runs and arpeggios that ended in the highest reaches of the instrument were impeccably delivered with zest and aplomb.
The middle movement's soulful canzonetta was a gem of sensitive phrasing, skillful portamentos and burnished, bittersweet sound that erupted without pause into the sizzling, gypsy-flavored finale marked allegro vivacissimo.
It was this folk-dance-based virtuosic tour de force that called forth the most sarcastic critical commentary in Tchaikovsky's time, and even the audience hissed at the Vienna premiere.
But nowadays the tempestuous movement is considered one of the most effective concerto finales ever written. Playing with fiery but well-controlled vigor, Fried did it full justice.
Under Nash's inspired leadership, the orchestra gave a vibrant performance of American composer Ferde Grofe's 1931 "Grand Canyon Suite," the essentially jazz-influenced composer's best known symphonic work.
A favorite with American audiences, the five-movement, imaginatively orchestrated suite vividly depicts the dramatic scenery of Arizona's Grand Canyon.
The program's opener, Nicolai's overture to his best-known opera, "The Merry Wives of Windsor," is a sparkling gem of a work that deserves to be played more frequently. Saturday's performance, while enjoyable, lost some luster through less than excitingly paced tempos and some pitch difficulties in the strings, which were corrected by a retuning of the whole orchestra at the overture's end.
But the most memorable pieces of the evening were Nash's two farewell encores, chosen from one of his favorite works, Edward Elgar's "Enigma Variations."
The hauntingly elegaic "Nimrod" variation seemed to symbolize his sense of loss at leaving his beloved orchestra; while the uplifting, near-ecstatic final variation unmistakably affirmed his belief that this flourishing community project would continue to bear artistic fruit well into the future.
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