FoBoBlo

Editor’s Note: This post is from our sometimes contributor Andrew!

Classical music and celebrity aren’t often thought of as being synonymous (at least not since the days of Mozart, or perhaps since Amadeus hit movie screens in 1984). But Joshua Bell may be the closest thing to a modern, American classical music rock star – after all, who else besides Bell can say they’ve played with nearly all of the world’s major orchestras; won both a Grammy and classical music’s highest honor, the Avery Fisher prize; contributed to the soundtrack for Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons AND dated a Tony- and Emmy-award winning singer/actress (in Bell’s case, the effervescent Kristin Chenoweth)?

Since only Bell fits those descriptions, it is no surprise that much of the pre-concert chatter at the Kennedy Center before the first of Bell’s three-concert tour with the National Symphony Orchestra focused on the man, the myth, the legend, the violinist.

But, as conductor Hugh Wolff reminded the audience in a brief pre-concert conversation, before Bell could take them “on a trip through sunny Spain” via Edouard Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole, he would take a voyage through Scotland via James MacMillan’s Í (A Meditation on Iona).

Much like the piece’s namesake, a gray, inhabitable island nestled between the Scottish and Irish coasts, the very modern Meditation, written just 13 years ago, captures and emphasizes this darkness through some very modern composing, including the shrill screeching of violins and drawn out crescendos, and through the use of some very modern instruments in the percussion section, including a thundersheet (a sheet of metal that makes a sound exactly as its name implies), a steel drum and steel pans.

While not “unbearably dull” as FoBoBlo contributor Rob feared the piece might be, it was not exactly “exceptionally gorgeous” as he had hoped. Rather, it fell somewhere between “too modern to understand fully…right?” and “music that could have been used in There Will Be Blood or on Lost.” There were hints of clarity – the low basses rhythmically mimicking the sound of the waves as Wolff alluded to before the performance – but by and large, MacMillan’s composition was perhaps a bit too conceptual. Either that, or Iona is one incredibly terrifying island of doom.

While the piece was relatively well-received, perhaps because of its modernity (a gentleman in front of me commented to his wife on his amazement at the use of steel drums), the audience was clearly saving the bulk of their applause for Bell, whose very warm reception was seemingly built up by the anticipation of his performance.

More on the concert under the cut.