On Sept. 20, Ian Hobson and the Sinfonia da Camera opened their 2024-25 season with a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the premiere of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” on Feb. 12, 1924.
Aside from the Gershwin work, the concert in Foellinger Great Hall offered three works by Czech composers, and two of those works, by Antonin Dvorak and Bohuslav Martinu, had been composed while the creators were living in America. The third composer of the Czech trio was Bedrich Smetana, and his joyous overture to his masterpiece comic opera “The Bartered Bride” opened the program. Hobson led the Sinfonia members in a vibrant reading in which the string sections sparkled in their playing of the wild explosion of notes that introduced the merry complications of this iconic expression of Czech rural life.
The next work was the Rhapsody-Concerto for Viola and Orchestra by Martinu (1890-1959), a piece I had never heard of, and a composition which I look forward to hearing again. It was composed in one month in spring 1952 in New York on a commission from the Ukrainian-born American violist Jascha Veissi. This work belongs to that period in Martinu’s life when he was returning to a melody-rich style.
From the opening bars, the viola of soloist Csaba Erdelyi intoned a succession of attractive lyrical themes. The concerto side of this piece played out in the lively interchanges between Erdelyi and the Sinfonia players. Erdelyi, well known in his role as first violist of the S.