Guest conductor Pinchas Zukerman leads KC Symphony in a concert of renewal

Guest conductor Pinchas Zukerman led the Kansas City Symphony in a reverberant performance in Helzberg Hall on Friday.

The program featured works by multifaceted artists, composers who also excelled in performance as instrumentalists and conductors, just like Zukerman himself, a virtuoso on violin and viola.

They started with J.S. Bach’s Concerto in D minor for Two Violins and String Orchestra, with concertmaster Noah Geller joining Zukerman for the solo roles. The busy figures flashed from one player to the other, their tones matching with a firm, ruddy timbre in the lower register, the brilliantly interlocking lines surely as much fun to play as to witness, though the performance did not achieve the sublimity sometimes possible with Bach.

Two of the works had more somber context.

South African-born composer Malcolm Forsyth was aware that “A Ballad of Canada” was likely to be his last work. Zukerman conducted the emotional premiere in 2011, weeks before the composer’s death. (Forsyth was his father-in-law.)

Yet it is a work of vigor and imagination, a painterly portrayal of texts that pay homage to the composer’s adopted homeland, taking pride in its natural beauty as well as the fortitude and sacrifice of its people.

The orchestra, together with the Kansas City Symphony Chorus, embraced Forsyth’s inventively colored work and its striking dissonances (with fantastic harp playing) and effects evocative of wind-torn tundra or raging artillery, a crushing sea or a mother’s sorrow.

Paul Hindemith’s “Trauermusik” was written in the wake of King George V’s death, composed in six hours and premiered the following day, with Hindemith on solo viola.

Here Zukerman was soloist, urging the string orchestra to greater passion with each wrenching sweep of the line. Their performance veered toward overwrought, Zukerman indicating a sustained motivation in the line. Releasing the final chord, he slowly dropped his bow to his side to prolong the lingering illusion of energy.

Up to this point, Zukerman’s performance was matter-of-fact, undemonstrative whether leading with baton or bow. Something changed when he launched Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2.

Repeatedly, he made a cueing gesture as though welcoming a musician or section to join in the music-making, and their response was immediate and cohesive.

It was Beethoven, renewed. Motifs played across the ensemble with consistency, lines sculpted in real time, adjusting balance. Dynamics were invigorated and expansive, with breathtaking pianissimos and full throttle fortes, crescendos kick-started by well-executed sforzandi that carried the audience along, too.

This story was originally published May 31, 2015 at 5:34 PM with the headline "Guest conductor Pinchas Zukerman leads KC Symphony in a concert of renewal."