Haddonfield does a solid job

By David Patrick Stearns

Inquirer Music Critic

CAMDEN - The biggest challenge the Haddonfield Symphony Orchestra set itself by moving to Rutgers University's Gordon Theater was giving up its underdog status.

Drawing New Jersey and Philadelphia audiences from their usual neighborhoods means you can't say, "It's good for a suburban orchestra, or for a graduate-school orchestra." The question at the finale of its first season here on Saturday is, "Is it good, period?"

The answer is yes; the reasons aren't typical.

Performance-wise, the orchestra gave a reverse view of the conventional world of classical music. It seemed not to have the slightest problem with matters that vex better known orchestras, like getting those lower-string tremolos in Strauss' Don Juan to make a significant, ringing statement. The intricate passages that connect Strauss' broad strokes did leave the Haddonfield players, students and recent graduates from notable area music schools, in smudgy form. But in Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, the celestial chord that ends the dreamy second movement isn't fully heard outside of recordings. On Saturday, it was all there - and with marvelous effect.

On yet another front, the orchestra made an excellent case for the ultra-live Gordon Theater acoustics. It was so loud that audiences couldn't hope to talk during the music.

An orchestra need not be great to deliver great experiences, as this one did in Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2. In a piece that draws a huge range of sound from even the least-adequate orchestras, music director Rossen Milanov was able to widen the envelope more than usual, employing the kind of thick, forthright string sound that students make so well, but also inspiring releases from other chords that gave the impression of sound wafting into the distance.

The concert touched two bases that larger-budget groups do not. Pianist Spencer Myer, who often plays here thanks to Astral Artistic Services, played the Ravel concerto with so much personal affection as to seem self-indulgent in another setting. But with Milanov's ultra-sympathetic accompaniment and the hall's close-range sound, you had to be thoroughly drawn in - so much that all the Chopin-esque touches more experienced pianists have unsuccessfully tried to bring to the piece seemed convincing from him.

The winner of the orchestra's Young Composers' Competition was indeed a winner - 22-year-old Japan-born, California-raised Takuma Itoh. His Concerto for Orchestra finds its sense of progression not so much in the usual thematic development but with pools of color that morph from one appearance to another. What it needs is another movement to decidedly transfigure what came before.

Not often does one encourage a composer to expand.

Contact music critic David Patrick Stearns at dstearns@phillynews.com.