Columbus Symphony Orchestra
Rossen Milanov, conductor
Claire Huangci, piano
Ohio Theatre
Columbus, OH
November 12, 2021

Williams: The Dream Deferred
Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 2 in A major, S125
 Encore:
 Gulda: Piano Play No. 6
Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73

As with the previous entry in the Masterworks series, the Columbus Symphony’s program on Friday night thoughtfully opened with a socially-relevant work by a contemporary African-American composer. Here, the work in question was the 2017 composition The Dream Deferred by Chicago native Evan Williams. Alluding to the Langston Hughes poem, the present work contends with how the American dream is all too often deferred for the Black and Latino communities, particularly amongst young males in what is chillingly referred to as the school-to-prison pipeline. Scored for string orchestra and harp, the piece is bifurcated into two brief movements, “it explodes” and “it dries up” respectively. The harp textures in particular showed the composer’s skill as the unsettled, ominous music proceeded until the titular dream eventually faded away into darkness.

The preconcert talk featured an informative conversation between music director Rossen Milanov and guest pianist Claire Huangci. The two first collaborated in Philadelphia when Huangci was just 12 years old. She was featured this weekend in Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2, a rather more lyrical foil to its more frequently heard predecessor. Plaintive winds were answered by gentle cascades in the piano, and the pianist’s elegant, sensitive playing captured one’s attention. Though certainly more subdued than the First Concerto, there were nonetheless ample opportunities for flair and virtuosity which Huangci delivered with aplomb, particularly in the riveting march. A ravishingly beautiful duet between the pianist and principal cellist Luis Biava offered a moment of calm before the big-boned finish. Huangci indulged the appreciative audience with an encore in Friedrich Gulda’s Piano Play No. 6, thoroughly entertaining in its jazz inflections and rapid-fire repeated notes.

The so-called “War of the Romantics” was a defining feature of nineteenth-century music, pitting against each other two vastly different approaches to composition. The present program intriguingly explored that by contrasting the Liszt with the latter half devoted to Brahms’ Second Symphony. The first movement opened gentle and genial, though it sounded as if it could have benefitted from additional rehearsal time. The trajectory of this expansive movement was not always clear as matters plodded along, with interjections from the brass fitfully uncoordinated and out of tune. Nonetheless, I found the slow movement more convincing with a serenity encouraged by the resonant cellos, and Milanov led the orchestra to a fiery passion before peacefully subsiding. Milanov aptly referred to the Allegretto grazioso as a “stylized minuet”, and it provided much charm ahead of the finale, certainly one of the most jubilant in the repertoire – just what was needed on a cold November night.