by Tom Wachunas
If there is a single idea that remains maddeningly entangled with my overall sense of the March 23 program by the Canton Symphony Orchestra, it is that love is a many splintered thing. For it was largely a theme of love, in wildly diverse applications, that united the three works on the program: Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, Canti guerrieri ed amorosi (Songs of War and Love) by American composer Claude Baker, and Symphony No. 5 by Dmitri Shostakovich. The evening was a stormy orchestral journey, some of it difficult to navigate, but ultimately richly rewarding.
Not surprisingly, the performance of the Beethoven overture was utterly entrancing. With inspiring clarity, the orchestra wholly embraced the work’s intense pathos and urgent drama of undeserved suffering and the resolute power of heroic love.
The second selection of the evening was the much touted world premiere of Claude Baker’s Canti guerrieri ed amorosi, which was commissioned through Meet the Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program, and written specifically to commemorate the CSO’s 75th Anniversary. [Read more…]