October 5, 2009
Bloomington Herald Times
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The orchestra’s current music director, Charles Latshaw, was in charge, very much so, and he had invited Maxim Bernard to solo in the Schumann A minor Piano Concerto, this between two vigorous sets of dances, those from the ballet “Estancia” by Alberto Ginastera and those called Polovtsian, from the opera “Prince Igor” by Alexander Borodin.
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In the dances from “Estancia,” particularly, the orchestra made itself proud. This paean to the gauchos, the cowboys, of Ginastera’s native Argentina reflects the broad landscape of the pampas, the loneliness of gaucho life and the frenzy that powers their day. The music is brash and evocative, qualities the orchestra nobly met.
The Polovtsian dances unfold in the second act of Borodin’s opera as the Tartars in 12th century Russia regale Prince Igor, their prisoner, with a lavish feast. The score contains exotic colors, undulating and slashing rhythms and a couple of haunting melodies. All these, Latshaw and orchestra worked very hard to capture. The performance heard was bold and distinctively stylistic.
December 14, 2008
Bloomington Herald Times
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Charles Latshaw, the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra’s enthusiastic and talented young music director, has his ensemble playing with renewed energy and consistently improving tonal quality.
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The BSO is playing better, having found a conductor who’s getting comfortable with his duties and definitely seems to know how to infuse the same sort of spirit into his musicians that he carries in himself for the music he chooses. For Saturday’s concert, he chose Mahler’s “Songs of a Wayfarer” and Elgar’s Enigma Variations. What one heard left the audience cheering.
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The orchestra did nobly with the music’s tender moments and its sumptuous climaxes. So, most importantly, did baritone Scott Harrison Hogsed, who took vocal and dramatic possession from the poignant opening words, “When my darling has her wedding day … I will have my day of mourning.” Hogsed never lost his intensity for capturing the music’s meaning, nor did he allow his voice to falter, regardless of the score’s demands, which call for power, resonance and range.
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The Enigma Variations have had all sorts of theories set forward as to what mystery the composer embedded into their substance, beyond saluting a host of his friends. But what matters, when one hears them played, is how sumptuous the conductor can make them sound and how his imagination and craft can vary the tempos and temperament suggested in the music. Those familiar with the Variations tend to wait for the 9th, titled “Nimrod,” so exuding of grandeur and nobility is it. But the set contains multiple other aural gifts, all of which were given their due in a reading carefully designed for major impact by Latshaw and carried out in noteworthy fashion by all those hard-working players in the ranks.
April 29, 2008
Bloomington Herald Times
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Sunday afternoon’s Bloomington Symphony Orchestra concert featured a parade of winners, not the least of them being the orchestra itself, playing resoundingly well under its energetic and perceptive young maestro, Charles Latshaw.
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But the musical parade also featured a pair of impressive new works commissioned by the BSO from prominent local composers along with three soloists, who added their distinctive talents to the well-attended program.
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Canfield, the orchestra’s chief second violinist and a prolific composer, gave Pellerite plenty of the plangent and soulful and mournful music to play, and play it to the max he did, this against an orchestral environment suggesting menace, mystery and elusive things of the spirit.
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Baker’s paean to the Underground Railroad, with words of history crafted by BSO tuba soloist Paul Hartin, quoted themes from spirituals, “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and the “Dies Irae,” within a musical framework emotionally rich enough and yet aurally subtle enough to both contain and highlight the text.
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Between the premieres, the BSO brought young Seung-Mi Sun to the front, she a junior at Harmony School, member of IU’s Violin Virtuosi, and this year’s winner of the orchestra’s Youth Concerto Competition. Seung-Mi played the opening movement of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. Close to letter perfect, her performance was brimming with excitement, solo cadenza and all, and a keen sense for the music’s melodic rapture. She’s got talent, to be sure.
January 15, 2008
Bloomington Herald Times:
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…the orchestra’s new and energetic music director, Charles Latshaw, had come up with a lovely idea for a program: to feature the BSO’s players, for the most part, in small rather than full-sized configurations, that way to present “An Evening of Chamber Music,” that way to give the musicians unusual chances to shine, which they did.
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Latshaw and company, I’m happy to say, prevailed.
October 29, 2007
Bloomington Herald Times:
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The Bloomington Symphony Orchestra has for itself and our listening pleasure a new and impressive young music director.
Latshaw had rehearsed his ensemble thoroughly, and his cues — via baton, hand, body, face — clearly expressed his intentions to the players.
The Tchaikovsky Fifth, so familiar and yet, for musicians, so difficult to realize successfully, received an intense, involved, and even interior reading, in which one could discern the composer’s wrestling with his own demons.
…the young Charles Latshaw, CIP’s assistant conductor, gave [Mozart] a simply wonderful interpretation, and the orchestra responded in kind.
Latshaw has a minimalist approach to conducting, offering precision and economy of gesture.
He directs when it’s necessary, and stays out of the way when it is not, instead attending to the rhythm and pacing of the piece, allowing the strings to nail their grace and lyricism to the pulsing winds and brass without obstacles or oppression.
Latshaw kept the orchestra steady and unhurried, ending the work without over-compensatin, allowing the piece to carry its reputation, and the orchestra to play in a transparent, precise, but uninhibited fashion.
I look forward to future performances by this upcoming maestro.
