I didn't attend this concert, even though it was local. Not in person, anyway. My slowly recuperating health is still not up to such a venture. But this community orchestra, which I've heard before, had such a tempting pops-oriented program that I signed up for the livestream version and took it in that way, just as I'd done for Banff.
It was all dance music: a suite from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, parts of which I like and parts of which I could do without; and three works of Latin American origin: the two most standard Mexican pops-classical numbers, Moncayo's Huapango and Márquez's Danzón No. 2, and a suite of Three Latin American Dances by Gabriela Lena Frank. This was more a set of tone poems than the others' dance hall numbers.
Thomas Alexander conducted, and for an encore they played an encore: the last couple minutes of Huapango over again.
There were, as you'd expect of a community orchestra playing difficult music, some weak and rough spots here and there, but they entirely avoided playing the Mexican pieces with a flat Anglo accent, a horror I've actually heard once or twice.
What I could have really done without was the municipal puffery talks from orchestra members in between every two pieces. It wasn't so much that they were begging for contributions, though there was a bit of that, it was more that they wanted to assure the listeners what a great orchestra they are, and how educational they're being by inviting local high school students to play along with them, to give them exposure to real "high level" (that's the term they used) playing.
There's high level and there's high level - this orchestra manages coherent playing with artistic interpretation, but next to a professional orchestra, there's no comparison. And judging by the last time I heard a community orchestra with high school students attached, and then they left and I could hear the orchestra without them, the orchestra didn't build them up, they dragged it down.
This was just fun to hear the music.
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