If all you're looking for is the best in symphonic music, performed by a first rate orchestra and under the direction of a talented conductor, you won't have much trouble finding it. Go to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, or any of a number of organizations, and you will be pleased. Come to the Miami Symphony Orchestra, and you'll get what you're looking for, too.
But if you want an unusual selection of pieces, ones you won't hear anywhere else, and you want to be engaged, personally engaged, by an orchestra and its artistic director, then you won't be happy anywhere but Miami. All top tier conductors are good. Many of them are at least somewhat dynamic. But how many of them wear blue velvet slippers for the first half of the concert, silver slippers with sparkles for the second half, and draw your attention to the fact that they're wearing red sparkly slippers tonight, as if you couldn't tell? And how many interact with the orchestra as if they were on the floor with it more than they are on a podium before it? How many conductors will wait while people deal with the cell phones they forgot to silence, or while stragglers seat themselves, or while audience members remember they forgot something and have to leave the hall ("she's a friend of mine," he tells us), all the while making affectionate sport of these disturbances with body language and expressions that are part Roberto Benigni, part Gene Wilder, part Marty Feldman, and part Victor Borge? Deadpan, but funny and charming. That's Eduardo Marturet, the genius behind the MiSO. And he's not kidding. He's very much for real. He gets intensely engaging sound out of his orchestra, too.
He also chooses surprising pieces, not at all part of the usual symphonic canon. Sunday night, March 3, it was Rodrigo's Aranjuez, but arranged for harp and orchestra. And if listening to and looking at Kristi Shade play Aranjuez wasn't enough of a treat on its own, she threw in a little encore, all by herself. That's like the MiSO concerts at FIU, where both times I've been there, the intermission was used to feature remarkably good organ arrangements, played by extremely talented organists.
Was the orchestra perfect? No, I guess it wasn't. Maylin Rete's English horn tone was slightly imperfect, though the playing was excellent. She's listed in the program as being on a leave of absence, so maybe being back from her leave has left her embouchure faintly rusty. And one of the two trumpets had a slightly off embouchure himself, on one note in the third movement of the Rodrigo. On the other hand, Isabel Thompson, who often plays bass clarinet, and is never closer than third string on B flat clarinet solos for the orchestra, was remarkable on B flat solos Sunday night. This was, by the way, a trimmed down ensemble, looking something like an early Baroque band. The full orchestra has almost 90 pieces. Sunday night, there were less than 50. And in typical Marturet fashion, everyone who soloed at all, got special attention from him when the piece was over. He walked down into the orchestra, and each person who soloed, concertmaster Danny Andai, the first violist, whose name I don't know, and anyone at all who distinguished him- or herself was asked to stand. The audience was duly appreciative.
So back to the question: Is MiSO the best ticket in town? It's not the cheapest ticket in town. It's less than any other symphony, though, and the quality is up there with the Cleveland and the New World. It's a better show than any other symphonic event, what with the interesting range of pieces and the floor show from Marturet. The face value of my ticket, which was for a very good seat, was $69. I don't know if it was less because it was part of a season ticket purchase, but it sure was less after I got the season on a 50% discount they were running. So for $35 or less, for the seat I had? Heck, yeah, it's the best ticket in town.
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