Guest violinist Akemi Takayama received strong applause and three huge bouquets of flowers. Photo by Eden Brown.
I never paid much attention to the Arlington Philharmonic, oddly. I love the Ninth Street Quartet, I go to the National Symphony occasionally, and I support WETA. But February 23rd, I felt like filling my afternoon with music, and saw they were playing a Brahms Symphony, and it was free. I drove over to Washington-Liberty High School hoping to hear a decent rendition of that symphony, and heard much more. As a bonus, the concert featured Japanese violinist, Akemi Takayama, the soloist in Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, op.14. She performed it beautifully, and that is no easy task, because when Barber says, “presto in moto perpetuo” (very fast in perpetual motion) he means it.
One of the prettiest pieces of the concert was Antonin Dvořák’s “In Nature’s Realm”, evoking spring, which was a good thing, given the temperature outside. Music Director, A. Scott Ward was not only fun to watch conduct - he almost leaped into the orchestra at one point - he also offered commentary which helped those attending relate to the music. He noted Brahms and Dvořák were contemporaries, and Brahms served as a mentor to Dvořák; they became close friends, travelling together and performing their work for each other for feedback.
The audience, nearly overflowing the auditorium, included children, which is one of the great benefits of a free concert. After the intermission, the orchestra played Johannes Brahms’ “Symphony No2, op.73 in D Major. One of Brahms most melodious symphonies, with “Brahms Lullaby” at the center of the first movement, it has one of the greatest finales in a long list of symphonic finales, and the APO did not disappoint, with a display of what a well-run orchestra can do, resounding percussion and heraldic horns joining strings in an impressive crescendo.
The concert was put on in partnership with Encore Learning of Arlington. The APO receives generous support from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Arlington County through the Arlington Cultural Affairs division of Arlington Economic Development and the Arlington Commission for the Arts. Many other local businesses supported the concert and the program also mentioned a specific bequest from Alan Herman.
The concert was so good, I donated to the APO, in the hope of attending more like this.
To donate, or to find out when the next concert is, see: www.arlingtonphilharmonic.org