Josefowicz Grooves in Adams Concerto

   Aaron Copland was smiling down on Music Hall last night.
   Literally, from the Cincinnati Symphony's season banner hanging in the foyer, and in spirit during Friday night's CSO concert on the same stage where his famous "Fanfare for the Common Man" was premiered in 1943.
   The program, led by guest conductor Michael Christie, included Copland's "Fanfare" and his 1946 Symphony No. 3.
Paired with them was the Violin Concerto by John Adams given a brilliant, over-the-top performance by guest artist Leila Josefowicz.
   Perhaps the leading exponent of Adams' Violin Concerto, Josefowicz, 29, stands for the proposition that if pianist Adams
intended to kill off any violinist who attempted to perform it, he met his match with her.
   She can not only play it, she revels in it. She even grabbed a microphone when she came onstage and gave the audience a few explanatory remarks.
   The opening movement, simply called "Quarter Note = 78," moves from hazy to bustling. The violin is a constant presence here, as it is throughout the 30-minute work. The music has a steady, eighth-note pulse, a reminder that Adams was once called a minimalist. Two synthesizers (played by Michael Chertock and Julie Spangler) added distinctive colors to the piece, like harp, steel drum and glockenspiel.
   Josefowicz indulged in some picturesque bobbing and grooving ("pseudo-Miles Davis and John Coltrane," she remarked) before heading into the lovely Chaconne (variations on a bass-line theme, think Pachelbel's infamous Canon). Subtitled "Body through which the dream flows," it was non-stop violin again, Josefowicz carving real-life dream pictures as she sailed above the CSO's elaborate variations.
   "Complete party" is the way Josefowicz described the finale, a fiendish, scalar, seven-minute perpetual motion for soloist and orchestra . Her energy here was astounding, as was Christie and the CSO's. She punched out its jazzy, double-stopped motive with gusto miraculously, she was able to re-tune her violin in a flash when a peg slipped and she brought the concerto to an exhilarating, hammer-blow finish.
   Christie, 34, music director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the Phoenix Symphony, gave the Copland an affectionate reading. The symphony blends Copland's nationalistic, folk-influenced style, exemplified by his ballets "Appalachian Spring," "Rodeo" and "Billy the Kid," with absolute music in the European symphonic tradition. Laced throughout, though not fully revealed until the finale, is the "Fanfare for the Common Man."
   Picking out Copland's Americanisms, like the dances from "Appalachian Spring," the "Shaker Hymn" and hints of gun battle ("Billy the Kid") was great fun. The majesty of the work shone through, too, in both quiet and more extrovertive moments.
   Kudos to the brasses and percussion who opened the all-American evening with a splendid enunciation of the "Fanfare," still a milestone in CSO history.
Repeat is 8 p.m. tonight at Music Hall.
(first published in The Cincinnati Post Feb. 17, 2007