Peninsula Symphony celebrates 75 in style

This was a snappy performance throughout almost all of its length. The all-pizzicato string parts in the scherzo movement were especially crisp. Klein’s extreme flexibility of tempo directions contributed to the general effect. Whenever the music became more exciting, the playing kept getting faster and faster. To say this made it even more exciting is to underestimate the effect. The Fourth is Tchaikovsky’s loudest and most vehemently expressive symphony if the performers care to take it that way. These certainly did.

Jean Sibelius’s short tone poem “Finlandia” also begins with a brass fanfare, slower and more solemn and vicious than Tchaikovsky’s. Resident conductor Nathaniel Berman led this piece, keeping the tempo slow long enough to give the music a mysterious questing quality. But that made the speeding up near the end into an especially effective surge of glory.

Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto doesn’t have any brass fanfares. It is, though, as extroverted as either of the other works. It’s written as a jolly but melodic display piece for the soloist. But Jon Kimura Parker, a noted pianist who’s been a guest at Peninsula Symphony before, declined to take it as an opportunity to dazzle. He played with a gentle, clear and ringing tone that carried through the sound of the orchestra. Grieg likes to take his gentle opening themes and transmute them into dynamic stomping edifices at the climax of his movements. Parker took even these moments with as much reserve as was compatible with his quietly elegant rendition.

Parker then proved he can stomp loudly with the best of them by playing, as his encore, a vehemently lively instrumental version of a song by a man he described as one of his favorite pianists, “Bennie and the Jets” by Elton John.

The concert began with Klein conducting the first performance of a work newly composed for this special occasion. This was “Celebration 75! A Fanfare for Orchestra” by Ron Miller, a clarinetist with the orchestra who performed in this concert. This fanfare is built on a short motto theme which begins in the horns and then is passed around the orchestra. It was a worthy introduction to the Sibelius and Tchaikovsky which followed.

Peninsula Symphony announced its next season, its 76th, at this concert. The season will begin with Taylor Eigsti, a jazz pianist who’s been a guest here before, in a concert including George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” This concert will be played to a new schedule, on Saturday, Oct. 5, at the earlier time of 7:30 p.m., at the Heritage Theatre in Campbell. The San Mateo performance will be a Sunday matinee the next day instead of an evening performance. Symphony management hopes that these schedule changes will make the performances more family-friendly.

The rest of the season will be performed to similar schedules, with a tribute to film music composer John Williams on Jan. 18-19 and famed pianist Jon Nakamatsu in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto on March 22-23, this one with Saturday evening in San Mateo and the Sunday matinee in Campbell.