MUSIC REVIEW

MUSIC REVIEW: Conductor takes stage for Arkansas Symphony's 'French Connections'

Nine years after joining the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, associate conductor Geoffrey Robson got to mount the Robinson Center Performance Hall podium for a Masterworks concert Saturday night.

The highlight of his "French Connection" program was undoubtedly Korean-born, Juilliard-trained, single-name pianist Ji in Maurice Ravel's jazz-influenced Piano Concerto.

Ji, clad like the orchestra musicians in black and white, but much less formally (no coat, white shirt, black-and-white patterned pants), rollicked his way through the piece's raucous third movement, but it was the gorgeous, almost whispering solo in the slow second movement that endeared him to the audience. (An encore would have added endearment, but he didn't deliver one.)

Robson and the orchestra took a gambol for the curtain-raiser, Darius Milhaud's Le Boeuf sur le toit (The Bull on the Roof), the catchy theme (in every possible key) weaving in and out of 30 Brazilian tunes, some of them on top of one another.

After intermission, Robson contrasted insouciant 1920s Paris, whence came the Milhaud and Ravel works, with the dour 1920s Berlin, by way of Kurt Weill's Symphony No. 1, titled "Berliner Sinfonie," which, Robson explained from the stage, questioned the meaning of life via echoes of Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss (and maybe even Igor Stravinsky).

Just to send the audience out with something familiar and tuneful, the concert closed with a charming performance of Claude Debussy's Petite Suite.

Robson, pianist and orchestra will repeat the program at 3 p.m. today at Robinson, 426 W. Markham St. at Broadway. Ticket information is available by calling (501) 666-1761 or online at arkansassymphony.org.

Metro on 10/22/2017

Upcoming Events