No doubt about it, the Nashville Chamber Orchestra is one of Nashville’s most unusual performing organizations. Its members are, by and large, the nearly anonymous super-pros whose string playing graces albums by Garth Brooks, Amy Grant, and the Indigo Girls, among others. In the same way that an apple tree produces apples, these musicians produce music—anytime, anyplace. Moreover, there is seldom a concert by the Nashville Chamber Orchestra that does not include something from its commissioning program—no doubt the most aggressive one since Vivaldi at the Pietà.
Last Sunday’s sold-out NCO concert at Caffè Milano was, therefore, a typical program from this untypical ensemble. The group began with a sprightly reading of the “Frolicsome Finale” from Britten’s Simple Symphony and ended with a repeat performance of a recently commissioned work by Conni Ellisor, Blackberry Winter. In between there were performances of works by Puccini, Vivaldi, and Kodaly; a reprise of movements from an earlier Ellisor commission, the title of which has been changed from Here/Now to Conversations in Silence; and a world premiere of the group’s most recently bespoke work, John Mock’s The Stone.
Some of these pieces were also featured at a recent Blair concert by the NCO, and differences in performance were minimal, except that the rushed quality evident at Blair had tightened considerably. The sound and air-conditioning systems at Caffè Milano were not the most conducive to serious listening, but then, this was not a “serious” session of music-making. This was evident from the audience’s relaxed attitude, and from the attitude of musicians such as Ellisor and concertmaster David Davidson as they soloed on two of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
Director Paul Gambill led performances of “Winter” and “Summer” that had the extreme freedom of tempo and dynamic more associated with the recording studio than with the concert hall. It was very exciting, and it was performed with the edgy sound of a good rock band. Even if I might have wanted a bit more of certain effects—the barking dog in “Summer,” or a bit more unsteadiness in the ice-slipping scene of “Winter”—the sheer élan of these readings sucked in the listener from the first bars. What’s more, this edginess, coupled with the rapid cascading of notes from the stage, forced the listener to hear the music in a new way. Phrases rounded by custom were given new jaggedness by strange accents. Passages such as the sleep music from “Winter” emerged with a renewed sweetness. Perhaps there is room for just one more recording of Vivaldi’s meteorological fantasia.
Another work on the program, Giacomo Puccini’s I Crisantemi, provided an opportunity to contrast NCO’s performance with that of the Israel Camerata, recently heard at its Ryman Auditorium date. The NCO’s performance was everything that the Camerata’s ragged, mistake-ridden reading was not. Attacks and phrasing were rock-steady, and the players’ ability to react instantly to each other gave this performance a remarkable surge of emotion. If I thought that the middle portions needed a bit more repose after the opening storm, the sweetness and warmth of string tone overall more than made up for what might have been some very minor defects in small parts—after all, this was in an environment where the printed music was accompanied by the whoosh of a cappuccino obligato.
Many people came to hear the new piece of the evening, John Mock’s The Stone. As with virtually all commissions for the NCO, Mock’s work had a very popular flavor—and I mean that not in any dismissive sense, but in the same sense that a work like Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances is both approachable and traditional. In the case of The Stone, the referenced tradition is Celtic, with featured parts for whistle, fiddle, guitar, and bodhran. The music was, by turns, sweet, charming, wistful, and stirring. Much of the piece was very textured—layers of string drones parted to reveal felicitous touches of instrumentation. It was obvious that concertmaster Davidson has done this kind of music before, and Mock certainly knows what those Irish pipes should sound like. The only pity was that guitarist Vane Baxter and bodhran player Kellyanne O’Sullivan had so little to do.
Good as it was, not everyone could get in. Director Gambill was pleased to announce that this performance was the first time that Caffè Milano had sold out on a Sunday night. The NCO will be performing the Mock piece again at its next Blair Series concert Mar. 8. Even then, the Mock will not be the newest work on the program: Gambill and the group will present the world premiere of J. Mark Scearce’s elegy for strings, Endymion’s Sleep. These rolling stones have no mossy music—which only makes me wonder when the NCO will be backup for Mick Jagger.
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