Bunch Symphony Blends Energy, Passion, Wit

by Diane Peterson

The Press Democrat, April 19, 2004

The Santa Rosa Symphony under the baton of Music Director Jeffrey Kahane pulled off a coup Saturday night at the Burbank Center for the Arts by disproving the notion that contemporary music can't engage.

Opening the concert, a world premiere of Kenji Bunch's ``Symphony No. 1: Lichtenstein Triptych'' charged up the audience with its irresistible energy, unabashed passion and rapier-sharp wit.

The piece earned not only a standing ovation, but hoots and hollers to boot. Leave it to a violist -- the jester of the classical music world -- to bring humor back to the concert stage, where composers like Haydn and Mozart once gave it free rein.

Bunch, a graduate of Juilliard who divides his time between performing viola and composing, blends pop music snippets with classical pathos in his first symphony, which pays homage to pop artist Roy Lichtenstein's cartoon art.

Like the art that inspired it, Bunch's symphony speaks to the masses while remaining provocatively and proudly American. Bunch not only has an individual voice but returns us to the optimism once found in the works of Copland, Howard Hanson and Samuel Barber.

Exhibiting clear orchestration worthy of Shostakovich, the symphony's first movement got off to an explosive start with a battery of special effects, including unusual percussion, muted trumpets and trilling violins.

A wandering line in the violas -- reminiscent of the slow movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 5 -- segued masterfully into the symphony's lush second movement, which spun out with the dreamy Romanticism of a Hollywood film score.

In a preconcert talk, Bunch said he wrote the second movement as a tribute to Bernard Herrmann, composer of many famous Alfred Hitchcock film scores, and the zany third movement as an homage to Carl Stalling, the composer of Warner Bros. cartoon scores.

The jazzy, angular third movement -- with the strings scurrying in perpetual motion and the percussion pounding out ``George of the Jungle'' rhythms -- brought the symphony to a close on a highly humorous note.

In tune with the spirit of the work, the bass players sported sunglasses at the onset of the third movement -- undoubtedly another first for the Santa Rosa Symphony.

Besides making its world premiere, Bunch's symphony marked the North Bay debut of Magnum Opus, a new music project underwritten by Kathyrn Gould of Menlo Park.

Gould's is an exceptional story -- a woman pioneer in the venture capital world with substantial music knowledge. Over the next five years, Gould will commission a total of nine new works to be premiered by three Bay Area symphonies. If Bunch's new symphony is any indication, Gould's project is bound to reap great benefits for listeners and composers alike.

Shifting from an American to a more international accent, the symphony showcased concertmaster Joseph Edelberg in Szmanowski's Violin Concerto No. 1 before intermission.

The Polish composer created his own exotic idiom, relinquishing traditional tonality for a more flexible chromaticism. His first violin concerto, which sounds a bit like Bartok's shimmering ``night music,'' presents challenges for both orchestra and soloist. Because the composer considered the violin as part of the orchestra rather than an individual voice, the orchestra occasionally crashes over the soloist like a huge ocean wave, drowning it out.

Against this massive wall of sound, Edelberg held his own, maintaining a focused, silky tone in both the upper and lower registers and plowing through the concerto's hand-crunching octaves, double-stops and harmonics with admirable aplomb.

The concert concluded with a vigorous performance of Beethoven's massive Symphony No. 3, ``Eroica.'' Under Kahane's baton, the orchestra played securely, with an ease that let the profundity of the music speak for itself.

The Santa Rosa Symphony will repeat the Saturday program at 8 tonight at the Burbank Center, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. Tickets: $15-$52. Call 546-8742.

You can reach Staff Writer Diane Peterson at 521-5287 or dpeterson@pressdemocrat.com.