Mike McInally

The Corvallis-OSU Symphony Orchestra’s “Russian Power” concert drew an audience of about 850 people Sunday afternoon to the La Sells Stewart Center on the Oregon State campus.

Symphony board members said that’s a good turnout for a concert that doesn’t feature a soloist.

The orchestra was the star of Sunday’s concert, anchored by a performance of Shostakovitch’s 10th Symphony. Again, I’m not an expert on symphonic performance, but I was familiar a bit with this particular piece of music, and to my ears, the symphony acquitted itself well with this difficult 50-minute-plus piece.

And conductor Marlan Carlson got quite a workout, punctuating his time at the podium with gestures to specific sections of the orchestra. In our interview for last week’s Entertainer, he had talked about the importance of maintaining communication with the orchestra during the piece, and he worked hard at doing that. (He also seems to be a bit of a ham on stage, and that’s fine.)

Carlson also effectively used the orchestra to illustrate some broader points about the music in remarks he made about Shostakovitch before the orchestra played the piece. My hunch is that many audience members found that useful, and at least some orchestra members seemed to relish their roles as teaching tools.

Next up for the orchestra: Its annual holiday concert on Dec. 6.

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