Voglar and Belgique inspires SRO audience at Columbia Symphony concert

by James Bash on May 2, 2010

Photo by Charles Noble

A marriage of heart and mind between guest artists Inés Voglar and Joël Belgique combined to make a superb and memorable performance of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra on Friday evening (April 30). The standing-room-only crowd at First United Methodist witnessed this talented husband-wife team deliver the utmost from Mozart’s gem of a piece.

Voglar is a violinist with the Oregon Symphony, and Belgique serves as its principal violist. Voglar and Belgique are also members of the Fear No Music ensemble of which Voglar serves as artistic director. Their commitment to music in Portland certainly helped to draw the overflow crowd of which twenty or more had to stand even after extra seating was brought in.

The performance of the Sinfonia Concertante by Voglar and Belgique was much more than a polite conversation between soloists and orchestra. Voglar and Belgique found a wonderful sensuality in the music, and created a joie de vivre. They seamlessly traded passages back and forth, slowed down together, sped up together, created true pianissimos and fortes, succinctly nailed cutoffs, and had fun doing it. Their performance held the audience spellbound. No one in the church coughed. Everyone was totally absorbed in soaking up as much music as the law would allow.

The orchestra, under the direction of music director Huw Edwards, played a splendid supporting role. They created a gorgeous tone and made sure that the articulation was crisp and accurate whenever necessary, and their effort helped to make the performance memorable.

For the second half of the concert, the orchestra played Brahms’s Symphony No. 2. The piece got underway in fine fashion, but during the first movement, someone outside of the building broke a pane of glass. The orchestra kept playing as if nothing happened, but it affected the group’s concentration a bit, because the intonation in the string section went briefly astray. Still, the musicians skillfully explored the contrasts in the emotions of this piece, delving into depths of despair and then rising to the surface with joy.

Principal oboist Brad Hochhalter and principal clarinetist Natalie Lehr created a beautiful duet in the third movement, and overall the woodwinds peformed very well except for a brief moment in the fourth movement when they seemed to be out of joint with the rest of the ensemble.

The orchestra was positioned so that the first violins were on the conductor’s left and the second violins on his right. The sound from this arrangement worked well and deserves another hearing.

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Postscript: I talked to a fellow who was sweeping up the glass after the concert, and he said that he didn’t find a rock anywhere. He guessed that the glass broke after someone (outside the building) put his/her elbow against the glass and broke it.

James Bash

James Bash writes articles for a variety of publications, including magazines such as Opera America, Open Spaces, Opera, MUSO, International Arts Manager, American Record Guide, Symphony, Opera Canada, and PSU Magazine. The newspapers include Crosscut, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Oregonian, The Columbian, The Portland Tribune, The Register-Guard, and Willamette Week. James has also written a number of articles for the Oregon Arts Commission. James was a fellow to the 2008 NEA Journalism Institute for Classical Music and Opera. He is a member of the Music Critics Association of North America (mcana.org) and lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Kathy.