“ ‘This may be the first ‘spaghetti western’ violin concerto.’ That’s how Bruce Kiesling, the Adrian Symphony Orchestra’s music director, describes composer George S. Clinton’s five-movement work for violin and orchestra, ‘The Rose of Sonora,’ ” writes Arlene Bachanov in last Monday’s (10/14) Daily Telegram (Adrian, MI). “Clinton’s piece, which had only its second-ever full orchestral performance at Sunday’s season-opening ASO concert, is certainly all of that, for it sure has all of the elements of a Western film score: the action, the romantic elements, the gunfight, the whole riding-horses-over-the-wide-open-prairie thing. Clinton, who’s an award-winning and very accomplished film composer, wrote his piece at the suggestion of, and in collaboration with, violinist Holly Mulcahy, who was looking for something like a classic Western score but with a twist: a female lead embodied by the violin. And the result is not only stunningly complex for its soloist, but extremely approachable.… Kiesling paired ‘The Rose of Sonora’ … with one of American classical music’s most recognizable pieces: Copland’s ‘Appalachian Spring.’ … Probably almost no one in Sunday’s audience knew the piece Kiesling programmed for the concert’s second half, Barber’s Symphony No. 1…. The ASO’s musicians did a magnificent job with it.”
Posted October 21, 2019
