Ann Arbor Symphony celebrates America in style

William Bolcom, left, and Arie Lipsky

Czarnecki/Dempsey

When an orchestra programs an “American Celebration,” the choices are as endless as the landscapes from California to the New York Island. The Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra’s “American Celebration” Saturday at the Michigan Theater chose music for a polyglot land, from composers who, native or not, speak its myriad tongues (native and not) with fluency and ease.

And in music of William Bolcom — in the audience to take a bow — Gershwin and Dvorak, the orchestra, under the baton of Maestro Arie Lipsky, played with fluency and ease to match.

Arkadiy Figlin

courtesy of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra

Certainly, ease was the calling card of guest soloist Arkadiy Figlin, at the piano for the Gershwin Concerto in F. He handled the work’s jazz and blues figurations with a winning combination of melting suavity and attentive, unforced nonchalance. It was glorious to hear him, and to hear all the colors he brought to his playing. The orchestra swung along, taking the syncopations like pros, finding the heart of this very New York music. It was delicious.

So was the evening’s opening work, the “Derby Dressage” section of Bolcom’s punningly titled “Seattle Slew: Three Dances in Forequarter Time.” In best Bolcom fashion, there’s a little bit of everything in this horsing around: the prancing carriage of the dressage steed, tango dancing, American popular dances and a tip of the old straw hat. It’s tremendous fun, with wonderful orchestration and delightful wind interludes bobbing up like tassels braided into a mane. The orchestra played it with verve and properly bridled wit.

Some of the evening’s most beautiful orchestral playing came in the Dvorak Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” surely one of the most beloved pieces in the orchestral repertoire. Bohemian-American, Native American, African-American, the music evokes images of the great American frontier even as it embraces classical European form.

Perhaps the orchestra’s enthusiasm for the piece got the better of it in the opening movement, where volume said more than finesse with the musical line and the pacing was less than ideal. But from there on out, it was glorious, with the strings playing with mellow warmth and the winds and brass glinting and glowing. The Largo, with its haunting English horn solo, shaped so eloquently by Kristin Reynolds, was stunning.

Whatever pacing problems the opening movement had disappeared in a scherzo that swirled through its transformations, and the work drew to a triumphant, beautifully colored close that was equal parts abandon and precision.

Watch a "Backstage Pass" video with Arkadiy Figlin: