Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra

Tonight's family concert outing was the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, coming to Greencastle to back up Ida Kavafian. Kavafian was fabulous, with a lovely dark sound that especially fitted the Dvorak Romance. But my favorite was Schumann's Second Symphony. While the Rhenish has become more favorable to me, I've always liked the cyclic nature of the Second. When the major motives of the four movements all come together at the end, it is like the musical version of a great novel. All the plotlines are intertwined at the end, revealing new relationships and new facets of the characters/motives. I was especially impressed with the woodwind section, including two lovely oboe solos by colleague Anna Mattix. And in a nice touch, the trumpets played on rotary instruments. The opening call seemed a little tentative, but the slightly darker sound and gentler pitch transitions that the rotary trumpet allows were very nice.

In other DePauw news, Eric Edberg has been Noised.