by Angela Sutton
The Greenwich Village Orchestra brought a bit of fantasy to relieve a gloomy February Sunday this past weekend at Washington Irving Auditorium, in the form of Ravel's song cycle, Shéhérazade. Maestro Vallet and the orchestra welcomed mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke as the soloist for Ravel's triptych, based on poetry by his "Les Apaches" associate, Tristan Klingsor. Klingsor's poems vary widely in their topic, but are each in their own way flights of the imagination.
Ms. Cooke gave a rich, warm performance of the text, without a hint of strain even in the lengthy "Asie"—an evocative journey through the Orient. The concluding song, however, "L'Indifférent," was perhaps the most affecting: a laconic love poem of missed opportunities, given effective, delicate voice by the soloist.
Mastro Pierre Vallet opened the program with orchestral excerpts from Berlioz's Damnation of Faust, including the famous "Rakoczy March." The opening selections, "Menuet des Follets" and "Ballet des Sylphes," are pure grand-opera fluff, and the GVO gave them a passable—although unusually thin-sounding—reading. The "Rakoczy," however, brought in the bombast and energy.
The orchestra truly hit its stride in the final work of the program, Brahms's Fourth Symphony. Greenwich Village Orchestra likes to play Brahms, and they presented this work with flair. The brass section, in particular, dug into the meaty and challenging parts of the outer movements, fleshing out the ensemble's sound admirably.
Greenwich Village Orchestra's season continues on March 30, featuring Barber's emotional Adagio for Strings and Violin Concerto, as well as Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony.