“Here’s something from our latest album.”
That’s a phrase you’ll frequently hear from a pop, rock or country act, but not in a classical concert hall. However, the conductor for this weekend’s Minnesota Orchestra concerts could make such a claim. Romania’s Cristian Măcelaru was on the podium for what are, arguably, the definitive recordings of two of the three works on the program.
Măcelaru led the Philadelphia Orchestra in the 2021 debut recording of Wynton Marsalis’ Second Symphony, called the “Blues Symphony.” And with the National Orchestra of France, he released George Enescu’s complete symphonic works last year.
Măcelaru also won a Grammy for a recording of Marsalis’ Violin Concerto, so you could say that the Minnesota Orchestra has invited an expert interpreter to lead this week’s concerts. He’s also reuniting with an old college friend, the orchestra’s principal bassoonist, Fei Xie, for 20th-century French composer André Jolivet’s Bassoon Concerto, a work that Măcelaru claimed in a curtain speech is something the two vowed 20 years ago that they would one day perform together.
And expertise was indeed on display at Thursday’s midday concert. The two movements presented from the Marsalis symphony swung with abandon, the Jolivet was a sublime showcase for Xie’s mastery of his instrument, and Măcelaru and the orchestra made a compelling case that Enescu’s intriguing voice deserves to be heard more often.
In 2022, Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra helped launch the Minnesota Orchestra’s season with his “Swing Symphony” (his Third), and the “Blues Symphony” could lead one to believe that Marsalis, ever the educator, is taking listeners on a chronological tour of jazz history via his symphonies.
But that sounds like too cerebral a description for a piece at its best when soloists are bursting out of the orchestral constraints and sending soaring solos skyward. Such as the soulful wails of clarinetist Gabriel Campos Zamora, the mellifluous sonority of Jaclyn Rainey’s French horn and Greg Milliren’s delightfully exuberant Latin jazz flute solo.
There’s also some swinging in Jolivet’s 1954 Bassoon Concerto, and Xie took full advantage as he dashed and darted among the choppy rhythms of the strings. But most engaging was the slow center of the concerto, when Xie brought maximum lyricism to a lush dreamscape summoned up by the strings around him. It’s hard to imagine Măcelaru and Xie dreamed of it sounding any better back in the day.
