Concert review: Joseph Conyers (double bass) Philadelphia Orchestra/Naomi Woo

For this engrossing array chosen by the Philadelphia Orchestra musicians, the strings featured prominently. The star of the night was principal bassist Joseph Conyers as soloist in Tan Dun’s 2014 Wolf Totem, inspired by Jiang Rong’s novel. Opening with striking timbres from Conyers’s bass colleagues, coupled with Tibetan singing bowls, the unearthly textures wouldn’t have been out of place in a science fiction epic.

The rugged interplay between the soloist (a lone wolf) and the orchestra (the pack) contains a riveting assortment of pizzicato passages, growls and portamentos to evoke wild animals. In addition to steely focus on his 2019 bass from Aaron Reiley, Conyers later shared details about his two different French bows. For the opening of the concerto and the entire second movement, laced with upper-register sequences, he used a lighter bow by Claude Auguste Thomassin, also chosen for the encore, a touching ‘Signore, ascolta’ from Puccini’s Turandot. For the second half of the first movement and the entire third, Conyers opted for his heavier model, made by Charles Claude Husson II.

With conductor Naomi Woo, strings also received top billing in Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte (also from 2014) with sleek and bracing use of pizzicato, such as the spellbinding ending with a series of solo plucks for principal cellist Hai-Ye Ni. In other passages bows barely brushed the strings, creating a pitchless pulse as if the instruments were breathing.

The rest of the evening included a fleet overture from Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances and in a final champagne toast, Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber.

BRUCE HODGES