On March 12, at Church of the Holy Apostles, in Chelsea, the Queer Urban Orchestra (QUO), under Artistic Director Ian Shafer’s knowing baton, offered a concert comprising a contemporary work limning the expansive Southwestern land and sky, the hyper-romanticism of a concerto its soloist deemed “mighty,” and a familiar early-Romantic, haunting, haunted symphony, in a program billed as “Fantastic Dreams.” Preceding these works, however, was a piece grounded in harsh current reality, reflective of an embattled people’s dreams, the plangent Ukrainian national anthem, for which we all stood.
Opening the concert proper was composer Gilbert Galindo’s “Prelude To Hymns Of The Sky” (2019), dramatically evocative of the vast land- and sky-scape of New Mexico.
Noted composer, pianist, and teacher James Adler was at the Yamaha for Sergei Rachmaninoff’s explosive and emotional Piano Concerto Number Two in C minor, Opus 18 (1901), and tugged at our heartstrings from the first Moderato movement onward. Adler’s playing in the opening was so vehement that it left him with a bleeding finger and the piano with bloodied keys. After a brief, necessary pause, he and QUO resumed, to give a moving, nocturne-liked Adagio sostenuto, punctuated with the soloist’s virtuoso account of the Più animato cadenza, and compellingly conveyed the sweep and yearning of its best-known theme, in the Allegro scherzando finale.
The second half of the evening was devoted to Shafer and QUO’s vivid realization of the diverse aspects of Hector Berlioz’s grand and colorful Symphonie fantastique, Opus 14 (1830), conveying the composer’s impassioned, if unrequited love for Anglo-Irish actress Harriet Smithson, and how it disturbed his most idyllic fantasies, and fueled by opium, led to his wildly tormented hallucinations, with the Dies Irae with chimes and witchy ritual dance among its highlights.
QUO returns to Holy Apostles, 296 Ninth Avenue at 28th Street, with “Grandiose Spirit,” made up of Zaq Latino’s “living enby,” Jean Sibelius’ Symphony Number Two in D major, Opus 43, and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto Number Three in D minor, Opus 30, featuring Matthieu Cognet, on May 7 at 8 p.m., and the annual GayLa: “A Celebration of Beauty,” with music from Jerry Herman’s “La Cage aux Folles,” and Libby Larsen’s “Overture for the End of a Century,” Florence Price’s “The Oak,” and John Williams’ “Star Wars” suite, on June 18 at 8 p.m. Visit www.queerurbanorchestra.org for further information.