Symphony No 3 . . . . . Roy Harris
Violin Concerto . . . . . Barber
Symphony No 9 (New World) . . . . . Dvorβk
Roy Harris's Third Symphony of 1938 has been described by Wilfrid Mellers as sounding like Bruckner might have if all he had was American wilderness behind him, rather than the riches of Viennese tradition. Virgil Thomson summed the work up as being "earnest, clumsy, pretentious, imaginative, and terribly sincere".
It's a piece that is rugged and direct, embodying a self-confidence that carries it through moments of crudity. Richard Pittman's handling of the symphony on Friday had moments that seemed either too nudging or too diffident. But the strength of Harris's vision shone through vividly enough to remind one why the piece still holds its place in the repertoire.
Pittman's accompaniments made the going difficult for his soloist, Michael d'Arcy, in Barber's altogether softer and more romantically inclined Violin Concerto. Submerging the soloist as Pittman frequently did is hardly the way to get the best out of this concerto, but it certainly highlighted the endeavours of the violinist in the finale, a competitive undertaking in which the audience on this occasion judged the soloist to be the definitive winner.
A jump back to the last decade of the 19th century brought the concert to a close with the most enduring work by a Bohemian then based in New York.
Pittman's approach to Dvorβk's New World Symphony aimed for a brisk unsentimentality. He took his ideas a little too far in the Largo. Elsewhere, the mixture came across as plain but rewarding.
