Every classical music concertgoer learns that there are things one simply does not do during a performance. Among the no-no's that will typically get you tsk-tsked: laughing at the visiting soloist while he is playing, standing and cheering between movements of a longer work, and clapping while the orchestra is still playing. All of these things happened in the auditorium of the University Theatre on Sunday during a performance by the Missoula Symphony Orchestra.
And all of them merely amplified the raucously joyous sense of occasion in the hall. It was a concert so stuffed with highlights, humor, brash power and ravishing beauty that the packed house of listeners found it necessary to create its own opportunities - before, during and after the music - to show its enthusiasm.
The program led with the familiar, with Franz Liszt's short and thrilling "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2." The musicians responded by tearing through the score with delicious abandon and exaggerated drama - and, at the end, breathtaking speed during the work's famous coda.
After a breath-catching pause for musicians and audience alike, the orchestra was joined by Ilya Kaler, a Russian-born violinist who, despite being the only person in history to win top prizes at the Sibelius, Tchaikovsky and Paganini competitions, has never quite earned the international fame one might associate with such a distinction.
Fame or no, Kaler proved his prodigious talent - as well as his colorful character - in performances of two barnburner works by Pablo de Sarasate, "Zigeunerweisen" and the two-movement "Carmen Fantasy."
Balancing razor-sharp articulation with a wonderful sense of playfulness, Kaler effortlessly spun Sarasate's musical yarns while shedding no small amount of horse-hair from his bow. At the end of one particularly virtuosic phrase in "Zigeunerweisen," he even drew hearty laughter from the crowd with a theatrical pluck of his instrument.
In the second half of the program, the orchestra alone held center stage for two works: Liszt's "Les Preludes," and Zoltan Kodály's "Háry János Suite."
In a brief talk before taking his podium, Butorac described the first of the two as "Liszt in his intellectual, serious garb."
While an apt description of the music, the orchestra's performance was anything but stoic. Instead, an ethereal beauty pervaded much of the performance, with Butorac drawing out the brilliant flashes of color and towering climaxes that link the work to later symphonic poems by Richard Strauss. While those brass-heavy climaxes yearned for a larger string section to balance things out, one couldn't quibble with the playing of the forces crammed onto the stage.
Perhaps the biggest surprise for many was the final work on the program. Even among devoted classical music lovers, the name of Kodály is known - if at all - for his impact in the realm of music education.
Yet from the evocative "sneeze" that begins the Hungarian composer's "Háry János Suite," Sunday's audience was treated to a vivid and energetic performance of one of the orchestral repertoire's most unjustly obscure works.
With its angular melodies and hiccuping rhythms, the suite plays out like a Gypsy cubist portrait, at once herky-jerky and picturesque. Despite the challenges inherent in such exotic music, the orchestra played with a wryness and ease that made it all feel perfectly familiar.
In the end, the audience finally got its chance to cheer for as long as it wished; and so it did, as Butorac called up nearly every section of the orchestra for a well-deserved solo bow.
The Missoulian, Joe Nickell