TPO’s Sunlight and Shadows Concert

American violist Juliet White-Smith (left), and the TPO’s Norwegian guest conductor Terje Mikkelsen (right).

 Music Auditorium. College of Music. Mahidol University. Nakompathom, Thailand. February 23, 2013. The only other time I heard William Walton's Viola Concerto in a minor, was decades ago in Aspen, when it was played by the great, and then very old violist, Lillian Fuchs. I remember not liking the concerto very much, but since then, my musical horizons have greatly broadened, and I can now understand why Walton was considered a conservative composer during this lifetime (1902-1983). At any rate, I downloaded the concerto and listened to it three or four times before its performance by the American violist Juliet White-Smith, and the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra lead by Norwegian guest conductor Terje Mikkelsen, and by that time, I not only liked the concerto, but I wondered how I could ever have thought it too modern for my tastes. I can't say that Juliet White-Smith produced an especially beautiful sound, the deep, brooding tone I look for from a viola, but she executed this difficult work with skill and assurance, and was accompanied by thorough support from the orchestra.

The surprise of this concert was the perfectly gorgeous performance of Beethoven's 5^th Symphony, an icon of the Western classical music canon, and so frequently played that I would have preferred the orchestra to have selected some other Beethoven symphony, say, the 6^th. As is the modern performance standard, Mikkelsen played the symphony very fast, but the orchestra was up to his pace and didn't miss a detail, although a few of the brass upper notes went missing a few times. The TPO is a very fine orchestra, but I attribute this surpassing performance to Mikkelsen's sure direction, as well as the enthusiasm of the orchestra's mostly young players.