SYMPHONY REVIEW Orchestra ends season in style

The composer began his career as an organist, and he loved Bach's compositions.
By JERRY STEPHENS
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
YOUNGSTOWN -- Maestro Isaiah Jackson and the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra opened Saturday's concert with Stokowski's orchestration of the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach.
We heard a long, rolling thunder of broken chords, arpeggios that added tone upon tone, with a seamlessly integral fugue that move incessantly in long stretches of sixteenths with the voices entering at irregular intervals.
Then there was the fugue, that dry, rigidly contrapuntal format characteristic of the Baroque, that in Bach's hands becomes exciting and fluid as it unfolds to our ears. There is nothing to which it can be compared among the compositions of Bach's contemporaries and predecessors.
Whatever the dry academic treatises of the musicologists say while expressing their doubts that Bach wrote it, everything about this shouts Bach. Circumstantial evidence maybe, but so is a trout in the milk.
History
Leopold Stokowski began his career as an organist and came to love the organ compositions of J.S. Bach. Stokowski wanted to share them with everybody and made orchestral transcriptions of some of the many that existed.
I came to know and appreciate Bach by way of a performance of the Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor in Cleveland when Stokowski was making a guest appearance with the orchestra. Maestro Isaiah Jackson conducted it as a tribute to his mentor, Leopold Stokowski.
Other compositions of equal merit filled out the program. The most notable of these was a performance of the Concerto No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra in E-flat minor by Franz Liszt. It is a four-movement concerto that is played without any pause. The orchestration of the first movement seems a bit ragged, and a very noticeable feature in the scherzo movement is the prominent use of the triangle.
The soloist was Fabio Bidini, an Italian pianist who may not be as well-known as Emmanuel Ax but whose talent is just as great. He has appeared with the orchestra before, playing Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2. As then, he knows how to make his instrument sing. He was again completely able to meet the demands of the concerto.
Added work
Since the Liszt concerto is very short, another work was added to the program to fill it out. This was Richard Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto, a short, one-movement composition from the motion picture, "Suicide Squadron."
It fell into neglect, possibly because of numerous performances by artists whose showmanship exceeded their talent. It is now having a well-deserved revival, but why does it need to be compared to other composer's compositions? Fabio Bidini's performance was, as usual, brilliant.
The program also included other works. One of these was "The Dance of the Hours" from Ponchielli's opera "La Gioconda." This ballet is from the third act of the opera and was an entertainment for the guests of the head of the Inquisition, Alviso Badoero, at his palace. It may be better known as a part of the Disney film "Fantasia," with its dancing ostriches and hippopotami.
Debussye's "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" was a peaceful interlude between the Bach composition and Samuel Barber's "Media's Dance of Vengeance." This last depicted the progression of the mythical character Media from contemplation of how her lover, Jason, has betrayed her into a frenzy of jealous rage.
The conclusion was the Bacchanal from Camille Saint Sa & euml;ns' opera, "Samson and Dalilah." This gave us a rousing final & eacute; to the end of the season.