SPOLETO BUZZ BLOG

Just in case there was anyone out there thinking Spoleto Festival USA, now more than a week old and entering the home stretch of its final seven days, had run out of fodder for the buzz machine, Emmanuel Villaume tonight proved that this festival still has energy to burn. At least until Lee Breuer decides to change his DollHouse again, what people are going to be talking about for the remainder of this week is the two hours that transpired on the Gaillard stage during this evening’s Festival Concert. Emmanuel isn’t above getting himself airborne during his more enthusiastic moments of conducting, especially when the music calls for it, and he had plenty of opportunity tonight.

John Kennedy’s Storm and Stress, an original commission for the festival this year, started things off. Kennedy’s musical roots are in percussion, and his 10-minute work was full of it, as well as a lot of other sounds evocative of nature’s wrath: wind, rain, thunder; he worked interesting snippets of jazz and what sounded like showtunes into the work, and at one point there was an unmistakable nod to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Some of the effects he pulled from the Spoleto Festival Orchestra musicians were completely new to me: at one point he had the double-bass players thwacking their bows against the bridge; elsewhere he had the violin section making sounds I’d bever before heard from an orchestra, but the effect was remarkably similar to a flock of birds chittering.

The work ended, literally, with a tremendous bang, and during the ovation Emmanuel was looking for Kennedy, who I eventually saw cruising down the aisle house right, toward the stage, where he disappeared into a door. That, I thought for a moment, was the wrong door. Sure enough, Kennedy seemed to become lost in the dark backstage area, because the crowd continued to applaud, and he continued to not appear. Finally, when Emmanuel held up a sheet of the music to stand in for John, the slightly flustered composer stepped through a door onto the stage and the ovation began all over again.

The real excitement was only beginning, though. When preternaturally gifted young pianist Andrew von Oeyen was finished playing Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, the “knuckle buster,” the Gaillard crowd had leaped to its feet and was shouting its appreciation almost before the final note has sounded. On the third curtain call, I saw Emmanuel speaking to von Oeyen as they were taking their umpteenth bow; when he was called out a fourth time, von Oeyen marched straight to the piano, sat down, and knocked out a delightful Gershwin tune (can anybody tell me what this was exactly?) that had the audience positively giddy.

After then intermission, Emmanuel led the SFO through a thunderous Rite of Spring (which Kennedy’s earlier work had some interesting similarities to). I think this was probably the first time Stravinsky’s Rite had been a part of the Spoleto or Piccolo program since several years ago when Charleston Ballet Theatre performed a hair-raising version (it was written as a ballet, after all) beneath Angel Oak to much acclaim (and probably a few cold showers, if I remember right). Emmanual and the SFO gave it a hell of a return tonight.

My only beef with the evening: their air didn’t seem to be on during the first half of the program. If I was wiping my brow, I know von Oeyen was hot.