Symphony of the Americas - Alejandro Drago, violin - Photo Credit: Wade Caldwell Photography

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL -- The Symphony of the Americas opened the 2013-2014 season with a high voltage celebration of Hispanic and Italian Heritage Month on Tuesday, October 15 at the Broward Center's Amaturo Theater. With Argentine born Alejandro Drago as guest violinist-arranger-composer, the spirit of the tango permeated the concert's first half. A rousing version of the Star Spangled Banner commenced the evening. Artistic Director James Brooks-Bruzzese bookended the program with the Viennese sparkle of Franz von Suppe's Pique Dame Overture and the exotic color and visceral excitement of Alexander Borodin's Polovetsian Dances from the opera Prince Igor. Brooks-Bruzzese dedicated the performance of the Borodin score to longtime orchestra patron Rose Miniaci. He told the audience that it is Miniaci's favorite work. With the orchestra in strong form, Borodin's sensuous melodies and flashy bursts of instrumental coloration were well served, the solo oboe and strings particularly rich and evocative.

Drago is a violinist of formidable gifts. Combining virtuoso dazzle with a tone that is dark and full, he can spin a melody in mesmerizing hues or play double or triple stops with seemingly effortless bravura. Drago's creative gifts are no less impressive. His fantasy on the classic Carlos Gardel tango El Dia Que me Quieras (The Day you Love Me) was a wonderfully expressive arrangement, Drago's surging violin voicing the melody over a skillfully crafted studio orchestra backdrop. A staple of Placido Domingo's solo concerts, Gardel's romantic melody receives wonderfully inventive treatment in Drago's splendid version, created especially for performance with Brooks-Bruzzese and the Symphony of the Americas.

The Gardel fantasia was only a prelude to the violinist's real tour de force - the premiere of his Violin Concerto "Mysteries of Buenos Aires." Both nostalgic and bursting with energy, Drago's concerto is a virtuosic romp replete with melody and rhythmic energy. Thoroughly contemporary in idiom, the score is both artistically vital and thoroughly entertaining. The opening movement Downtown bustles with spicy harmonies and restless rhythms. Over a walking bass line, the violin sings, grates and cajoles, the sound of the Argentine bandoneon (the concertina mainstay of tango bands) never far behind. The second movement Of Love and Death pictures a child practicing at the piano, at first bored and struggling; then suddenly enlivened by a girl walking past his window, the first portents of childhood innocence interrupted by visions of the broader world. Drago has conceived a series of beguiling waltz melodies, picturing both the child's piano lessons and the populist entertainment of carousels and barrel organs. Drago's glowing sound captured the salon charm of the waltzes. Renee LaBonte, the orchestra's multitalented Executive Director played the prominent piano line with elegance and agility, mirroring the child's ambivalence and naiveté. The finale is a sizzling dance, appropriately dubbed Mis Mayores Bailan (My elder's dance). While the violin conjuring up the sound of such percussive instruments as milongas and bailongos, the sound of Carnivals sweeps through the restless energy of the orchestral fabric. With Drago displaying his fiery projection and stunning technique and the orchestra tackling the daunting rhythmic complexities with skill and aplomb, the concerto proved a real winner. As an encore, Drago offered Astor Piazzolla's haunting Oblivion, played with lustrous sonority and exquisite musicianship, the string accompaniment beautifully projected.

The hypnotic melody of Enrique Granados' Intermezzo from Goyescas featured the orchestra's cello section, the sound warm and transparent. Rossini's Overture to The Barber of Seville zipped along at a crisp pace, the witty wind writing adroitly delivered. A streamlined version of Puccini's Manon Lescaut spotlighted the orchestra's strings, Brooks-Bruzzese alive to the Italianate passion and gleaming melody that define Puccini's operatic oeuvre. The Tarantella and Can-Can from La Boutique Fantastaque received the evening's most brilliant orchestral performance. Once a staple of the repertoire, Ottorino Respighi's arrangement of songs and piano works by Rossini seems to have fallen off the radar. This is doubly unfortunate because the ballet score is a bona fide instrumental showpiece and Respighi's modernist treatment of the melodic material spicily reinvents Rossini's tunes in striking orchestral guise. With robust trumpet and brilliant mallet percussion joining colorful winds and strings, Brooks-Bruzzese led a vigorous, energetic display of instrumental virtuosity. The entire program proved a winning, festive opening to a new season.

James Brooks-Bruzzese, Artistic Director James Brooks-Bruzzese conducts the Symphony of the Americas in an all Mozart program with Alexander Kobrin as soloist in the Concerto No. 20 in D minor 8:15 p.m. on November 12 at the Amaturo Theater. For tickets and information, call 954-335-7002 or see www.SymphonyoftheAmericas.org.