Last night I had the enviable opportunity to listen to the Ann Arbor Symphony present a Latin inspired performance.  You should envy me; it was delightful.  Such energy!  Such emotion!  Such music!

They began the program with Don Juan, Op. 20, composed in 1888 by Richard Strauss. It tells the story of  a man looking for perfection in a woman.  Along the way it seems, perhaps more than once, that he has found perfect love.  But in the end he becomes disillusioned and disgusted with himself.  He allows the brother of one of his lady loves to kill him in a duel.   The music is beautiful, lyrical and lush…and in the last moments frenetic as the duel ends abruptly.  The piece closes softly with the end of Don Juan’s lusty life.

The Symphony then introduced Marco Sartor, the evening’s soloist, who plays guitar unlike anything I have ever heard.  Mr. Sartor is finishing up his PhD at Yale and we were so fortunate that he took a break to come to Ann Arbor to play.   At the lecture before the concert he said that the guitar could by played with different techniques, producing sound ranging from nasal to “as round as the tones from a flute.”   During the performance of two pieces, Concerto in D Major composed by Antonio Vivaldi in 1740, and Fantasia for a Gentleman composed by Joaquin Rodrigo in 1954, he showed us that range of sound and more.  He is an amazing artist.  Often I thought another instrument in the orchestra was playing, belatedly realizing it was the guitar.

Most unfamiliar to many of us, the Symphony played Huapango,  by Jose Pablo Moncayo.  This piece premiered in 1941.  Don’t be put off by the soft start, listen at least to minute 5 and I think you’ll be hooked.   It’s the kind of piece that requires concentration from members of the orchestra.  The kind of piece my director would be telling us not to listen for an instinctive entry but to “do the math and count!”  This one would be fun to play, and at the end you could see almost every member of the group grinning.  And all around me after the thundering applause died away I heard people say:  “That was fun!” and “I’ve never heard that before, wasn’t it exciting!”

The evening ended on a dramatic note with the playing of Bolero, composed by Maurice Ravel in 1928.  You’ve all heard this piece in movies.  I wondered if I would be envisioning Bo Derek running on the beach with her hair in cornrows.  For the record I did not think of her once during this performance.  The snare drum, placed in the center of the orchestra kept up the relentless pace, beginning softly accompianed by the flute, and growing increasingly intense as different soloists elegantly played the theme, each a bit louder and more intensely then the one before.  I began to feel sorry for the cellos and violas  who were plucking the same 3 notes over and over for what seemed hundreds of measures.  But finally they and the violins were drawn into the fray and the whole piece ended on a jubilant and intense note.  We all gasped, even though we knew how it would end.

This was one of those evenings where you just had to smile, from beginning to end.  What a gift this organization gives to their community.  What a priceless gift.

I haven’t stopped smiling yet.