Led by guest conductor Eric Culver, the Brown University Orchestra played three pieces Saturday night to an enthusiastic crowd in a tightly packed Sayles Hall.
Fluttering, swirling sounds dominated by the string section hauntingly introduced the audience to Jean Sibelius' "Symphony #2, Opus 43," the first piece performed. Yet these delicate and hurried notes layered upon one another to create a sense of worrisome anticipation. In the second movement, a series of notes echoed through the orchestra. The deep sounds of the cellos enriched these flourishes with resounding intonations of impending doom.
Yet redemption came in the form of beautiful, lulling violins and innocent woodwinds. The woodwinds' solid, steady countermelody to the fluttering lightness of the string sections created a complex crescendo accompanied by the brass section's weightiness. Complex, swelling, smoldering sounds combined when the whole orchestra played together. In the final movement, the fluttering strings from the first movement returned, yet the flourishes of clarinets and timpani brought a darker complexity to the chords.
"(Sibelius's) writing is inventive, never repeating a gesture without a new angle," wrote Culver in the program notes. "This piece constantly defies our expectations."
The second selection of the night, Sergei Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Opus 43" brought down the house. Audience members gave multiple standing ovations to the incredible performance of pianist Rosaleen Rhee '08, whose mastery of the piano brought out the multitudes of musical expressions inherent in this piece. The taut countermelodies between Rhee and the orchestra created a musical conversation. Rhee punched out trills of contrasting notes and lightly touched the keys to invoke the mystic setting of Rachmaninoff's piece, which was inspired by a talented violinist who was rumored to have sold his soul to the devil for his musical prowess.
Perhaps one can make the same claim about Rhee, whose dazzling performance seemed out of this world.
