Yo-Yo MaListening wasn't enough. You had to be there to take it all in.

As one of the world's leading musicians, cellist Yo-Yo Ma is renowned for his compelling tone, masterful technique, and convincing musical storytelling. But on May 14 at the Adler Theatre with the Quad City Symphony, he demonstrated a key element that could only be experienced in the live performance: body language.

The special centennial-season concert was unparalleled for its depth of expression, precision playing, and warm sensitivity, especially in the second-half performance of Antonín Dvo?ák's Concerto in B Minor for Cello & Orchestra with Ma. And when the spotlight shone on the Quad City Sympony in the first half, the orchestra flexed its considerable dynamic and melodic muscles in no-holds-barred performances of Johannes Brahms' Academic Festival Overture and Pyotr Tchaikovsky's tuneful Romeo & Juliet Fantasy Overture, creating stark moments of volcanic intensity and radiant melodic shaping.

The closing Masterworks concerts of the Quad City Symphony's centennial season included a commission meant as a prelude leading, without pause, into Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. I was skeptical. The Choral symphony - one of the greatest compositions in music - was a logical conclusion for a season-long celebration of 100 years, but attaching contemporary music to it raised two questions: What could the new music possibly add, and would it diminish Beethoven's towering work?

Yet James Stephenson's A-ccord worked on several levels April 11 at the Adler Theatre. It successfully connected Beethoven to 21st Century musical thinking. More importantly, it neatly summarized the rigor and thoughtfulness of Music Director and Conductor Mark Russell Smith's highly symbolic program - which presented a unified message bridging time, style, and language, and ceded the spotlight to guest vocalists as the Quad City Symphony closed its milestone season.

A-ccord brought all that together, featuring both voices and instruments, placing an English translation of Friedrich Schiller's "Ode" (a component, in German, of the Ninth Symphony) alongside words from Quad Cities poet Dick Stahl, and treating Beethoven's source material in a contemporary way, with an innovative use of a single melodic line with rhythmic and orchestral variations.

The pieces in the Quad City Symphony's fourth Masterworks concerts of the season would seem to have little in common: modern post-minimalism, a Mozart concerto, and a symphony rooted in religious faith. Yet in different ways, the presentation of each piece on February 7 unlocked the music.

Revisiting Michael Torke's Quad City Symphony-commissioned Oracle, the orchestra reached a comfort level with the composition that brought to light new facets through a sparkling, seasoned performance. Demarre McGill, principal flutist with the Dallas Symphony, redefined his instrument as muscular yet supple in an imaginative treatment of Mozart's Concerto No. 1 for Flute & Orchestra. And the highlight of the program was a towering performance of Anton Bruckner's epic Symphony No. 4: Romantic, aided significantly by introductory comments that framed it in the context of the composer's life.

In its December 6 concert, the Quad City Symphony checked off three important boxes - things every orchestra should strive for.

It included contemporary American music, in this case a world premiere from a local composer in University of Iowa professor David Gompper's impenetrably obscure Sunburst.

It illustrated the role of the sensitive accompanist, showcasing six of the symphony's own members in three pieces.

And finally and most impressively, it ignited and illuminated a musical masterpiece with sizzling passion and a refined artistic vision: The cohesive and insightful artistic ideas of Music Director and Conductor Mark Russell Smith joined with the orchestra's unrestrained musical abandonment in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's masterful Symphony No. 40.

With the premiere of a nebulous, esoteric piece and a dark, densely sobering Brahms concerto behind him, Music Director and Conductor Mark Russell Smith picked up the microphone to address the audience before the second half of the Quad City Symphony's November 1 concert at the Adler.

The audience was likely looking for some emotional relief, but Tchaikovsky's Pathetique symphony loomed, with its morose "Finale" - creating the potential for a depressing albeit well-performed concert.

Smith set an optimistic tone. He called the Pathetique "Tchaikovsky's greatest symphony" - pointing out the "life lived" through this music and focusing attention on its innovations.

His words were the right message at the right time. In framing the concert's centerpiece, Smith helped pull the audience through the performance, allowing it to appreciate the trio of challenging pieces without getting sucked under by bleakness.

The Quad City Symphony had to contend with a last-minute change in soloists - and the piece he was playing - for the opening Masterworks concert of its 100th season. But the orchestra on October 4 dug deep to unearth world-class playing to match legendary pianist André Watts - and in the process seemed to exhaust itself. With a popular symphony and the world premiere of a commissioned piece in addition to a piano concerto with Watts, the intensity and high artistic level of playing were exhilarating to hear, but the orchestra didn't sustain them in the second half of the program.

Mark Russell Smith

Looking despondent, the young conductor was comforted by his mentor. "Think of it this way, my son," the old maestro began. "If everyone was equally dissatisfied with your repertoire, at least you gave them a balanced season."

It's an old joke, but it sarcastically underscores the futility of finding music that will satisfy everyone.

But, in the Quad City Symphony's 100th season, Music Director and Conductor Mark Russell Smith has fashioned a carefully considered, diversely adventuresome musical celebration that includes a balanced sampling of masterpieces, premieres of six new commissioned works, and guest soloists ranging from world-class recording artists to members of the orchestra.

It's a dream season that lies ahead, but it's been an evolutionary process for Smith to get there.

From an Adler Theatre stage filled with more than 200 musicians, the Quad City Symphony forcefully premiered Gustav Mahler's monumental Symphony No. 3 on April 5. Moving from the dissonance of uncertainty to the transcendental climatic moments of harmonic resolution, the concert was abundant in gravitas, contrasts, and drama that revealed a thorough artistic vision from Music Director and Conductor Mark Russell Smith and included a valuable collaborative process with other area musical organizations.

Through the thick melodic honey of Russian Romanticism and the ever-changing musical illusions of a contemporary American composition, the Quad City Symphony on December 7 fashioned a successful concert from two divergent approaches to lyricism. Although the symphony occasionally blurred the differences between melodies and their accompaniments, they achieved resplendent moments of uplifting splendor in both pieces.

The program paired Jennifer Higdon's imaginative, three-movement Violin Concerto - which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize - with Sergei Rachmaninoff's profusely tuneful Symphony No. 2. Separated by a century of musical development, these works feature vast differences in compositional technique and tonality: Rachmaninoff worked in the customary symphonic form while Higdon writes improvisationally, and Rachmaninoff used traditional harmonic structure while Higdon employs a variety of tonal systems developed during the 20th Century.

But they are similar in using lyricism or songfulness as the primary means of self-expression. Consequently, in both cases, the artistic challenge for the Quad City Symphony was the same: to emphasize, with dynamics and stylistic nuances, melodic and motivic fragments and differentiate them from background sounds and accompaniment - a task the orchestra and its guest conductor struggled with in the first movement of Rachmaninoff and throughout Higdon.

With its adventurous selection of 20th and 21st Century American music along with a broader sampling from the standard repertoire, the Quad City Symphony Orchestra's upcoming season represents a sharp contrast from its most recent one. Music Director and Conductor Mark Russell Smith said in a phone interview that the challenge was "finding the right balance between the familiar and unfamiliar."

He has succeeded in both selection and placement. The award-winning contemporary American music has been sprinkled among stalwart European masters, resulting in imaginatively diverse, bold programming spanning 250 years in the six Masterworks concerts.

This year, the orchestra will present works by American composers in four of the six programs and feature two world premieres of music commissioned by the Quad City Symphony organization. "This is what I like in a season," Smith explained. "Giving composers a forum for their work" and providing a "variety, and that's what the audience likes."

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