Northampton, MA, 10 February 2008. The Pioneer Valley Symphony, under the baton of Paul Phillips, returned to this city’s 1892 Academy of Music yesterday evening for the 1st time in 10 years. The 800-seat opera house had been unsuccessfully converted to a single-screen 1st-run movie theater in the interim, and racked up a sizeable debt in the process that it has now largely worked itself out of. It is good to see it being used again for the kinds of events for which it was built. Phillips said it felt like being home where they belong.

It is always difficult to launch a concert, to get that 1st note out together, in tune and in time; it is especially difficult when the 1st work on the program is a delicate filigree-like piece such as the evening’s opener: Ravel’s 1908 (Yup; it’s the centennial of its composition) Ma Mère l’Oye [Mother Goose] Suite. The work was originally composed for a pair of pre-teen pianists, children of close friends of the composer, as a 4-hand work that they could play together. This explains its subject, its relative simplicity, and its structure as separate diverse little items rather than a single, unified and flowing whole. Ravel soon orchestrated it into this suite (1910), and later expanded that into a full ballet (1912), which does flow somewhat more smoothly. The Suite was selected for this 3rd concert in the PVSO’s 69th season because the latter’s unifying theme is “Youthful Visions.”

This 1st note was just a tad ragged yesterday evening, the sound a bit thin, as if the orchestra hadn’t quite warmed up enough after coming in from the nasty weather (that also no doubt put a small dent in the size of the audience), but it didn’t take it long to get over it and spin the magical web, with different instruments playing different fairy tale characters in fine solo turns as the piece reeled out, meandering through the forest and into the “Enchanted Garden.” Moments in the work echo some earlier Russian ones: a taste of Tchaikovsky’s “Oriental Dance” from Nutcracker in the central “Laideronette, Impératrice des Pagodes [Ugly Empress of the Pagodas]” movement and a hint of “The Great Gate of Kiev” from Moussourgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in the final one.

Any doubts about the abilities of this all-volunteer orchestra to “get it together” and make a loud noise were quickly dispelled with the gusto attack of Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 1 in c, Op. 11, composed when he was 15, and actually his 13th, but the 1st 12 were for strings alone. The energy was sustained as they gave a brisk, robust, yet nuanced performance of this much less frequently performed symphony than his later ones, perhaps because he had not yet found his own voice but was imitating those of his heroes, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, some works of whom are echoed here. As in the Ravel, the musicians were attentive to the varied dynamics; the potentially treacherous pizzicati in the 4th movement came off clean, crisp and precise.

The program book contained fine notes by Zeke Hecker about the works, but Phillips gave additional oral introductions to each as well that helped prepare the audience to better listen and understand. He promised something spectacular after the intermission, and the orchestra, Phillips, now in his 14th year with the players, and the 20-year-old soloist, Brown University junior, timpanist (and percussionist and pianist and budding conductor!) Vinay Parameswaran delivered in spades. The piece was the 25-years-young (Yup, 5 years older than the soloist!) Concerto for Timpani and Orchestra by William Kraft (b. 1923), himself a timpanist and percussionist with the LA Philharmonic for 26 years. The arithmetic tells us the work was composed in 1983 when he was 60, so not a youthful vision for him. The orchestra flipped its standard positions: the timpani, percussion, and harp moving to stage front and the strings shoved back behind them, imitating and punctuating what the former played. It’s a spectacular work, modern but rooted in classical structure, two energetic fast movements surrounding a slow one, actually an elegy for the composer’s mother who died while he was working on the piece, with development and recurrence of material, and a dynamic range from ppp to fff with everything in between. The performance by everyone was phenomenal; the evening ended in a blaze of glory that brought the audience quickly to its feet. Although some stuffy folks might take offense, I thought it was neat to see a Vinay fan club there, too, in the balcony with me, up from Brown, some replete with I [heart] Vinay T-shirts underneath their dress shirts, cheering for him in the way athletes are cheered in a stadium.

This audience is one that would be the envy of many a professional orchestra and big-name conductor. Families came with their children, some still in arms: America’s future classical music lovers! The silver-haired (that include this writer!) were there, too, of course. Curiously, except for the burst of applause at the end of the 1st movement of the Mendelssohn (which might well have happened in his time, too!), audience etiquette was nearly impeccable (No cell phones went off!), likewise the potential envy of many a major city symphony. These listeners were listening!

There was a time when organizations like this existed all across the country: the ‘golden age’ of classical music that is now but a distant memory in many locales. It is alive and thriving here. The program book also included a list of some 47 musicians who have been playing with the PVSO for 20 years or more, as long as or longer than Parameswaran has been alive. How many professional orchestras can boast this, especially when proportion is figured into the equation? Yet their playing is anything but staid; there is no question about the professional quality of these fine though unpaid musicians. One senses that as long as they keep playing this way, the audiences will keep coming, and guarantee a future for the art form, thus belying the many doomsayers.