Review: Minnesota Orchestra offers impressive, outstanding Benjamin Britten Violin Concerto

When plotting out his first season as Minnesota Orchestra music director, Thomas Søndergård decided to focus his winter visit on two countries: Russia and England. After celebrating the new year with Russian fare, he and the orchestra are spending this weekend in an England of two generations and decidedly different moods.

When composers Edward Elgar and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor were making their names circa 1900, their country was at the peak of its prowess, the British empire virtually spanning the globe and its economy thriving. But 40 years later, England was under threat from Germany. While composer William Walton sought to raise the spirits of his people with triumphant tones, Benjamin Britten created works that dwelled on the tragedy of war.

One was Britten's Violin Concerto, and it proved the sonic summit of Friday night's concert. With the brilliant Italian American violinist Augustin Hadelich as soloist, it was a tremendously powerful performance. Not only did it underline that Hadelich is one of the world's great violinists — a deeply passionate and technically impeccable interpreter — but it may have been the most impressive performance the orchestra has offered under Søndergård's leadership.

Not to take anything away from a very fine rendering of Edward Elgar's popular "Enigma Variations" and some enjoyable diversions from Walton and Coleridge-Taylor, but even those who had no knowledge of Britten's concerto surely came away moved by its eloquent evocations of loss and grief.

It wasn't World War II that inspired Britten to write his concerto, but the recently ended Spanish Civil War that had taken some of his friends. The composer was an outspoken pacifist, and he saw any war as tragedy. On Friday, Hadelich, Søndergård and the orchestra made that message resonate inside Orchestra Hall.

Rather than the typical fast-slow-fast format of a typical concerto, Britten opted for slow-fast-slow, the opening movement a meditation haunted by a recurring five-note pattern that loomed like an inescapable specter. Employing dynamics that stretched from glassy whispers to intense orchestral cries, the concerto found Hadelich smoothly segueing between anxious ruminations and heartfelt elegies, his trills, plucks, soaring lines and lightning-fast passages all executed expertly. The audience's adulation was rewarded with an encore, a movement from a J.S. Bach partita.

While Walton is best known for works that evoke the majesty of the monarchy, his "Scapino" is a far less consequential creation, a comic overture that served as a high-spirited curtain raiser. Similarly, Coleridge-Taylor's "Idyll" was a pleasant interlude on the other side of the Britten, the strings sounding particularly sumptuous.

But the most well-known piece on the program was Elgar's "Enigma Variations," an imaginative, episodic work inspired by the composer's circle of friends, each variation taking on the character of a member of his retinue.

It was an opportunity for the orchestra to show off its versatility with a variety of moods and display the ample artistry of such members as violist Rebecca Albers, cellist Anthony Ross and bassoonist Fei Xie in solo settings. Its outstanding ensemble work peaked in the sonic swells of the "Nimrod" movement, which Søndergård and the orchestra made moving enough to bring tears. If anyone had any left after the Britten concerto.

Rob Hubbard is a Twin Cities classical music writer. Reach him at wordhub@yahoo.com.

Minnesota Orchestra

With: Conductor Thomas Søndergård and violinist Augustin Hadelich

What: Works by William Walton, Benjamin Britten, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Edward Elgar

When: 2 p.m. Sat.

Where: Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Mpls.

Tickets: $65-$84, 612-371-5656 or minnesotaorchestra.org

Note: Søndergård also will conduct a relaxed family concert at 2 p.m. Sunday ($12-$29).