New York Classical Review

In a program that swung from the Continental Divide to the Nile in a single bound, the Boulder Chamber Orchestra celebrated its 20^th anniversary Sunday night with a high-altitude performance in Carnegie’s subterranean Zankel Hall.

The transition from America’s roof to below sea level seemed not to faze the musicians at all, as music director Bahman Saless led the 42-player ensemble in his own composition, the five-minute travelogue Ode to the Rockies, then joined with soloist Adam Żukiewicz in a lively rendering of Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Egyptian”).

But the evening’s high point was the orchestra’s compelling and finely detailed performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, which could hold its own with any orchestra anywhere, large or small.

Conductor/composer Saless has been a loyal Boulderite since earning his doctorate in physics at the university there decades ago, with a brief sojourn in California to work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and compose around the margins of Hollywood, scoring movie trailers and nature films. He has no problem describing his Ode to the Rockies in a program note as “cinematic.”

Indeed, many images scrolled across the mind as one listened to this brief, eventful piece, with its broad vistas, nostalgic horns, expansive strings combining with syncopated dancing woodwinds, and subtle quotations from two local favorite songs, “Where the Columbines Grow” and “Rocky Mountain High.” The symphonic Americana of George Chadwick and Aaron Copland seemed to hover nearby, and maybe even a touch of Ives in the enigmatic finish–a big forte followed by a pianissimo sigh, tricking the audience into applauding too soon.

Composed to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of Saint-Saëns’s recital debut at age 11, and premiered with the composer at the piano, the Concerto No. 5 exemplified his fluent keyboard technique and disdain for bombast and empty display. Pianist Żukiewicz introduced the gently drooping theme alone, then spun off into a swirl of scales and arpeggios as the orchestra’s woodwinds took it up. As athletic as the piano part was, there was almost a feeling of chamber-music collaboration as it wove through the instruments of the orchestra during this movement.

A product of the composer’s winter holiday in Luxor, this concerto earned the nickname “Egyptian” in its second movement, whose Andante marking made room for scherzo-like flourishes in Arabic scales, a moody nocturnal recitative, and a swaying “Nubian love song” the composer claims he heard boatmen sing. Chirping woodwinds imitated frogs on the banks of the Nile as the piano wandered, Orpheus-like, through the exotic scene.

Saint-Saëns described this concerto as a “sea voyage,” and there was a feeling of steam propulsion to the compact finale, with its chugging piano and whistling high winds driving the dancing and lyrical themes. Soloist Żukiewicz was in constant motion as the themes spun out and overlapped, building to an almost Rachmaninoffian finish.

One wondered how old Beethoven would fare after Żukiewicz and the orchestra had served up such a glittering bauble of a concerto, but one needn’t have worried. From the opening bars of Beethoven’s Seventh, with powerful chords punctuating sustained, finely tuned woodwinds, one sensed that conductor and players had a strong conception of the symphony and the ability to realize it.

Hearing this small orchestra in a modest-sized hall, with Saless expertly managing the balance between strings, winds and brass, made for a wonderfully transparent listening experience: strings incisive, flutes sparkling above, and timpani with hard mallets making their own statement. Saless kept it all airborne with that persistent dotted rhythm, unflagging yet capable of nuance.

The conductor kept the long-short-short beat of the Allegretto right in time too, but lightly, almost one beat to the bar. Far from funereal, the movement even swung a little. Woodwind tuning was lovely again in the second theme, and the flute-bassoon doubling made a haunting sonority when the main theme returned.

This small, tight band had no trouble firing off the scherzo at a blistering yet unrushed Presto. Conductor Saless was confident enough to give them their head, with just a nod or an elbow here and there for emphasis. He gave horns in the trio a little more freedom, but they always kept in time.

Clearly, conductor and players understood in their bones that rhythmic integrity was the key to this symphony, and they demonstrated it yet again in the hard-driving finale, where the downbeat was king, and the players with all the 16^th-notes just had to do whatever it took to get there on time.

Saless held it steady even through the lighter moments of the development section, sweeping the listener all the way to the symphony’s final cannon shots—and leaving no doubt that this orchestra—which isn’t even old enough to order a drink in Colorado—belongs in Carnegie Hall.