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BWW Review: Cherokee Anguish Upstages Sleeping Beauty in Symphony Concert

Feb 24, 2019

We've had a copious amount of Russian music from Charlotte Symphony this year. Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade headlined the first two classics concerts of 2019, and Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty suite is continuing the trend. Even after Symphony emerged from their annual retreat in the Belk Theater pit with Charlotte Ballet's production of Nutcracker, subscribers do not seem to tire of this steady Russian diet.

The presumption may be that we'll see better attendance if the featured piece is Russian rather than American, old-style rather than new. Sleeping Beauty wasn't as long as Michael Daugherty's Trail of Tears concerto or as new as Aaron Copland's more familiar Billy the Kid suite, which kicked off the evening. Nor was it played with the same verve at Knight Theater under the baton of guest conductor Joseph Young, who actually has educational, vocational and family ties in the Carolinas.

Principal flutist Victor Wang stepped downstage to play the solos in Daugherty's concerto, deftly flutter-tonguing, overblowing, and producing multiphonics and glissandos - upstaging the marquee ballet suite that followed after intermission. In the context of the forced Cherokee migration carried out by the U.S. Army in 1838-39, pursuant to Indian Removal Act of 1830, the chord-like multiphonics and glissandos sounded like laments or nostalgic reflections, the overblowing sounded somber and contemplative like a Japanese shakuhachi flute, and the flutter-tonguing had a range of emotional connotations, submission one moment and terror at other times.

There was so much more to admire in Wang's playing beyond the special effects, particularly in the lyrical middle movement "incantation" that followed the longer, more turbulent "where the wind blew free" section. You might wonder why the concluding "sun dance," starting off so lightly, becomes as turbulent as the opening movement. Daugherty gives us a moving explanation in his program notes, reminding us that the religious dance ceremony of the Plains Indians was banned for a full century by the U.S. government.

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