Moon over Miami, and free music under it – Knight Foundation
Arts

Moon over Miami, and free music under it

There’s always something about an outdoor evening concert that creates a sense of occasion. Maybe it’s a night of perfect weather, or a wonderful outing with a date, or perhaps a piece of music that you hear with new ears and suddenly understand its greatness.

Saturday night (Mar 19), Orchestra Miami repeats a concert it gave earlier this month at the Banyan Bowl in Pinecrest Gardens, featuring soprano Susana Diaz in Samuel Barber’s beautiful Knoxville: Summer of 1915. Director Elaine Rinaldi and the orchestra also will perform the Mozart Symphony No. 29 (in A, K. 201) and perhaps inevitably, the same composer’s universally popular Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (Serenade in G, K. 525).

The concert is set for Collins Park in Miami Beach, right next to the Bass Museum, with curtain time at 8 p.m.

Rinaldi has chosen ideal music for a night out, music that sounds good al fresco. The Mozart Nachtmusik, of course, is designed precisely for an event like this, though it’s not known exactly why Mozart wrote it in 1789. It’s likely it was written for some society function or other, and probably it was background music for dining and socializing. You have to hope, if that were the case, that there were a couple folks there who took seats near the band to listen more closely to the wonderful music around them.

The early A major symphony, written in the spring of 1774 when Mozart was only 18, is a masterpiece of old-fashioned economy for small forces and a new kind of melodic and motivic power that is unique to Mozart and that flowers here in that great opening, with its octave-jump main theme and sense of bustling expansion that gives it such personality and charm. It’s sunny, positive music, and an entertaining glimpse at the work of an emerging master.

The Barber song, based on a memoir by James Agee, is about twilight, but it has that Romantic feel and warm lyricism that distinguishes Barber’s music and has made it one of the American composer’s most durable works. I wonder sometimes whether that piece is even more effective in an outdoor than an indoor setting. When the soloist starts to sing about people on their porches, rocking, it’s easier to see that if you’re outside, feeling relaxed and casual, and there might really be a few porches nearby.

A recent piece in the Arkiv Music magazine, Listen, argues that Barber, while always in repertory for the Adagio for Strings, is actually a neglected composer these days, and I’d have to agree. We hear his Violin Concerto all the time, but the Cello Concerto was a revelation when Sol Gabetta brought it hear last season with the Detroit SO. And the late Canzonetta, the slow movement for a projected Oboe Concerto, is a lovely piece that would fit splendidly on programs of Americana.

The songs aside from Knoxville are rarely programmed (haven’t heard Sure on This Shining Night for a long time in recital), and the Essays for Orchestra ought to be regular features on American programs. Barber ought to loom larger because it can be argued that he has just as much direct appeal as Copland or Bernstein, and that he came up with a different way of writing contemporary American music in a very tempestuous time ought to be celebrated.

Rinaldi is bullish on the acoustics at Banyan Bowl, and I’m sorry I missed the chance to hear her young orchestra there. But the Collins Park setting should do admirably well for this music, and it’s hard to beat the lure of a BYOB free concert under the stars, right by the sea. (Information is available at 305-274-2103 or through www.orchestramiami.org.