SURPRISE ENDINGS, SURPRISE CELLIST
                       Marin Symphony Enlivens Bay Area Scene 
                                                  By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Jan. 30-Feb. .6, 2012
                                                                  Vol. 14, No. 45
            Barely 50 years old, New Yorker Lowell Liebermann has already written his Opus 113---more works than a good many composers achieve in a lifetime. Though best known for his work in opera, it was his Symphony No. 3 that arrived at the Marin Symphony under the baton of Alasdair Neale Jan.29.
            It’s a well-crafted, thoroughly consonant 24-minute work in a single movement, with its biggest surprise coming at the very end. After an upbeat crescendo section you were SURE was leading to the final cadence, Liebermann astonishes with a kind of postscript,  fading away to an enigmatic ending, “like a question mark,” as the music director phrases it. It thus joins eminent past piece like Ives’ “Unanswered Question,” Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony and Strauss’ “Thus Spake Zarathustra” with its unresolved fade-out codicil.
            Liebermann has themes virtually colliding, one falling, one rising.  The heavy string themes, with an attractive cello solo (Jan Volkert), give way to a brassy section with soaring horns, then making space for a syncopated blues segment with vibraphone and a catchy clarinet solo (Arthur Austin), bringing to mind the spirit of Leonard Bernstein. Liebermann has a lyrical gift audible here---not surprisingly, he has composed two operas---and his symphony provided an attractive companion to the concert’s European music by Elgar and Dvorak.
            An 18-year-old cellist with the poise of a Yoyo Ma? You bet. Nathan Chan of San Mateo (and the Juilliard School) showed a professional stage presence and a very solid interpretation of Elgar’s opulent Cello Concerto, which tried to rekindle the old romantic spirit in Britain after World War One. He produced a very big tone audible everywhere and mastered the tricky high string positions of this tour de force. Neale, who is himself a fellow Englishman by birth, cited  Elgar’s “vast nostalgia” here, with the E Minor signature furnishing a touch of sadness.
            Chan reaped a prolonged and deserved standing ovation. Attempting afterward to convince Neale unsuccessfully to come to center stage for added bows, Chan finally pointed to his cello as the concert’s real star, and then had the instrument lean forward, as if bowing to the audience. A very clever musician, this young man, with the potential to go far.
            The concert concluded with Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony (No. 9).
             Esteemed readers: We regret transmission glitches which delayed the timely posting of this Jan. 30 review.
                Marin Symphony, repeating Jan. 31 at the Marin Center, San Rafael. For info: (415) 479-8100, or go online.

          ©Paul Hertelendy 2012
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           Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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