The Fairfax Symphony Orchestra gave the world premiere of Malek Jandali’s “Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra” with clarinetist Anthony McGill
, and for a regional nonprofit like Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, it would be very easy to lean in on the easy, stocking its seasonal stables with warhorses just to keep the seats full.But among the things to admire about the FSO is its commitment to variety. Avoiding the obvious seems like a guiding principle for conductor and music director Christopher Zimmerman, who reliably and artfully balances “give them what they want” with “show them what they might.
“Germany has Beethoven,” an audience member tapped me to tell me after the concert, “Syria has Malek.” Before the orchestra started in on three excerpted movements from Jandali’s sixth symphony, “The Desert Rose,” the composer himself emerged onstage holding its inspiration in his hand: A palm-sized desert rose, an intricately layered formation of gypsum, barite and sand created through extensive shaping by wind, water and pressure, which takes the unlikely and uncanny form of a fully bloomed rose.
A crisscross of darting piccolo and nimble bassoons brought us to McGill’s final cadenza, a thrilling soliloquy that moved with liquid ease through jazz-tinted voicings and angular simplicity. A thickening haze of strings tightened into a bursting climax — it felt like something had been launched.The “Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major” , more handily known as the “Eroica,” was originally composed for and subsequently de-dedicated to Napoleon — who, turns out, was awful.
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