Kansas City Symphony explores wedding rituals in a surprising program

Love of a woman. Love of the exotic. Love of the past. The Kansas City Symphony celebrated love in its many guises Friday in a program full of surprises.

Music director Micheal Stern has an affinity for American artists and for new works, and the program at Helzberg Hall combined those interests, featuring American composer David Ludwig’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, a work co-commissioned by the Kansas City Symphony.

Ludwig wrote the piece for violinist Bella Hristova, his wife, who performed the virtuosic and demanding solo part. Her dark timbre and dense fiddling suited the Eastern European influence integrated into the work.

The semi-programmatic piece was based on the wedding ritual (preparation, commitment, community celebration). Ludwig created captivating moments and effects, with ascending glissandi, sliding harmonics, off-kilter dance rhythms and unusual timbral combinations.

The composer thanked the soloist with flowers and, somewhat unconventional for the concert stage, a kiss.

Claude Debussy’s “Ibéria” (“Images” No. 2) was performed brilliantly — chaotic and challenging, the Spanish flair evident in the evocative, accented rhythmic motifs and sinuous melodic lines, with clarinet, percussion and oboe stand out performances.

Completing the concert with a little joie de vivre, George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” was fun, familiar and energetic. The ensemble played with the tempos, expanding and contracting, and displayed consistency as motifs ranged through the ensemble. The grand, sweeping melodic gestures, quick style shifts and attention to the pianissimos added to the brash excitement of the work.

With such energetic fare, it was unfortunate that Charles Ives’ Symphony No. 3, which opened the concert, was given a passive reading. Not bad (considering the excellent fugal section), but not brilliant. Ives’ genius is in his complex and cantankerous writing, full of twisted quotations and startling dissonances. Played without a total commitment, without communicating how and why the parts work together (and when they don’t, creating that heady grinding tension), the result was unconvincing.

And, “World Tour” was an ill-considered label. Three American pieces with European roots and one European piece don’t represent a comprehensive worldview. “Iberia,” though well-performed, seemed to compete with the Gershwin.

Why not present four (or three) strong renditions by 20th (and 21st) century American composers, instead?

This story was originally published April 9, 2016 at 1:58 PM with the headline "Kansas City Symphony explores wedding rituals in a surprising program."