Minnesota Orchestra ends its virtual concert era with an emotion-charged program

While the imminent return of audiences to Minneapolis' Orchestra Hall is cause for celebration, there was much to mourn this week, too.

So perhaps it's appropriate that for their final performance to an empty hall, the Minnesota Orchestra and music director Osmo Vänskä again called on composer Dmitri Shostakovich, whose "Leningrad" symphony, with its chilling tones, greeted the arrival of the coronavirus in March 2020 when the orchestra played its final concert before shutdown.

On Friday, it was Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony that eloquently captured the tension and anxiety that permeated so much of the past 14 months, be it sparked by injustice, loss or simply survival. And yet the sun shone in on an ensuing violin concerto by classical-era composer Joseph Bologne without seeming incongruous.

Add an elegy by American composer Carlos Simon and a moving movement from a symphony by Gustav Mahler, and it proved a fine finale to the virtual phase of this orchestra's performance history.

Not to say that these online adventures won't continue. When in-person concerts resume June 11-12, many will continue to be webcast, as well as broadcast via Twin Cities Public Television and Minnesota Public Radio. But the sound inside Orchestra Hall — not to mention the spiritual exchange between performers and audience — is something technology has yet to match.

That said, my hat is doffed to the video crew that made these presentations so engaging. The cinematography and sound were typically fine in Friday's performance, streaming for free at minnesota­orchestra.org, and the opportunity to get intimate with the musicians felt especially welcome on such an emotion-charged program.

In some ways, Shostako­vich's Chamber Symphony — a transcription for string orchestra that Rudolf Barshai created from the composer's Eighth String Quartet — set a high bar for intensity that the rest of the concert never transcended. Solemnity and menace periodically gave way to oppressive explosions as suffused with terror as those memorable moments from the "Leningrad" Symphony 14 months ago.

Keeping up such a mood would have proved draining. Thankfully, violinist Karen Gomyo arrived to solo on a lovely, lyrical slice of the 18th century by Bologne, aka the Chevalier de Saint-Georges — a fascinating figure, born in slavery before becoming a Parisian cause célèbre as a musician, fencer and revolutionary.

Gomyo's bright tone and inventive cadenzas proved ideal for his Violin Concerto in D, her fingers gracefully flying up and down the neck of her violin, her meditative moments tinged with melancholy.

I've heard Simon's "An Elegy: A Cry From the Grave" in its original string quartet form, and I found the string orchestra arrangement on this concert not nearly as absorbing. Inspired by another unarmed black man's death at the hands of a police officer (Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.), it was an apt choice for the anniversary of George Floyd's murder by Minneapolis police. Yet it felt overpowered by the larger musical forces.

Closing the concert with the "Adagietto" from Gustav Mahler's Fifth Symphony sounds like a fine idea, for Mahler has become a specialty of Vänskä and the orchestra. Yet I've heard them play this with much more intensity and a more deeply involving emotional arc. Maybe this time of empty halls has run its course, and the orchestra is ready for an audience-fueled recharge.

Rob Hubbard is a freelance classical music critic. • wordhub@yahoo.com