New Jersey Symphony Orchestra at the Count Basie

The first piece ends with a flourish. From here it’s not too difficult to believe Conductor Jacques Lacombe when he says man and the music he makes has been forever influenced and inspired by water.

After simple consideration it’s all so clear. Intentional or not, the comparisons are obvious. The way music develops slow, languishing textures like a still pond or violent crescendos like waves crashing on a beach, it’s a perfect fit. The bows of two-dozen violinists glide up and down over their instrument strings, all of them uniform, like ripples over water.

It's something more than interpretation.

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra performed a showcase of musical compositions at the Count Basie Theatre Saturday night inspired by famous waterways throughout the world. The show, called Best of Water, was the subject of the orchestra’s 2010-11 season Winter Festival.

Some of the musical selections told stories about blue rivers or white-capped oceans. Others sought to describe the feeling of water, to translate it in hopes of identifying why man has forever been drawn to it. It was clear during the performance that the shared connection between man and water does exist, and that finding musical examples to illustrate that point proved only as difficult as looking to some of history’s most famous musical pieces.

Lacombe, in his inaugural season as NJSO’s conductor, said the relationship between man and water is an obvious one. Water sustains life, and, perhaps because of this fact, has always been a constant source of beauty. With an assortment of pieces from composers like George Frideric Handel to Ernest Chausson, Lacombe and the orchestra showed the variation that exists in inspiration.

The night began with Bedrich Smetana’s The Moldau, a 19th century piece written about the Vltava River in Prague, a composition that describes the river and its flowing water.

With more than a thousand patrons packed into the theatre, Lacombe took a moment between each piece to explain to the audience the connection between the music and water. But, the pieces Saturday night were not just inspired by water, but also by playing on water, as evidenced by Handel’s Water Music.

Water Music, Suite No. 2, is a robust and regal-sounding piece with what Lacombe described as an interesting dialogue between French Horns and the trumpets. Water Music was performed on the River Thames in England for King George I in the early 1700's, Lacombe said, and to recreate the scene of music being played as the king of England sat floating on a barge, Lacombe put the horns and trumpets on opposites sides of the stage.

The effort succeeded in establishing a feeling of distance between the two sections.

Baritone soloist John Hancock accompanied two of the night’s pieces, singing poems accompanied by music. Hancock’s resounding voice poured sorrow into Chausson’s Poeme de l’amour et de la mer, and his confident turn on Edward Cone’s accompanying composition to Dover Beach brought feeling to Matthew Arnold’s famous – and cryptic – poem.

The performance of Cone’s piece was part of the NJSO’s New Jersey Roots Project. The goal of the project is to highlight the works of residents of the state or those with affiliations in New Jersey. Cone was a composer and professor at Princeton University until his death in 2004.

Arguably the most famous water-related piece of classical music – assuredly the most famous waltz and the greatest ever written, Lacombe said – the night ended with a rendition of Johann Strauss’ The Blue Danube. Featured in countless films, television shows, and, perhaps most notably, cartoons, the waltz was a fitting end to a night that promised to highlight the Best of Water.