Fountains of Yehuda: Lansing Symphony Orchestra uncorks faceful of French fizz

Time seems to dangle like a droplet of water when the tumult of the Lansing Symphony dies down and the round tones of Guy Yehuda’s clarinet hang in the air for a fleeting minute or two.

This Saturday, Yehuda turns on the waterworks.

Yehuda will step out as featured soloist in a devilishly difficult, fluid-as-flame concerto by French composer Jean Françaix. The solo turn anchors a night of bright and witty French (or almost French) music, culminating in George Gershwin’s splashy dance suite from “An American in Paris.”

The dazzling 1951 film version of “American in Paris,” with Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, put Gershwin’s music front and center in a daring 20-minute climactic dance sequence. In a lucky convergence, the movie will return for several big screen showings at Lansing’s Celebration Cinema and Regal Lansing Mall Jan. 19 and 22, courtesy of Turner Classic Movies.

Gershwin’s opening act at the symphony Saturday isn’t well known to many music lovers, but Jean Françaix cut an unusual figure in the radical-minded 1960s — an urbane, warm-hearted showman in the vein of Charlie Chaplin.

In 1976, a famous British clarinet player, Jack Brymer, declared Françaix’s 1968 concerto unplayable, but not because the music was too cutting edge. In defiance of the times — and the mid-20th century diktats of his chilly modernist compatriot, Pierre Boulez — Françaix packed his music with riotous, droll dynamism, like a luxury clown car.

“His music is extremely beautiful, and witty and anything can happen,” Yehuda said. “He does a 180-degree turn and you find yourself in a different key. And this concerto takes it up a notch.”

When Yehuda approached Lansing maestro Timothy Muffitt with the idea of performing the concerto, Muffitt instantly knew the flashy flair of Françaix would set the table perfectly for a magnum of musical Champagne the maestro longed to uncork, George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris.”

“The concerto was the stimulus for the whole program — the Frenchness, the vigor, the hustle and bustle, the delight and surprise,” Muffitt said.

When the maestro sat down to study “An American in Paris” alongside real French music like the Françaix concerto and Ravel’s delicate “Mother Goose Suite” (also Saturday’s concert) that he realized how authentically French — not Epcot Center French — “An American in Paris” really is.

“We’re so familiar with it that we lose touch with how Parisian it really sounds,” he said. “This isn’t just American music with a French label.”

The affinity goes a lot deeper than the French taxi horns famously heard in the opening bars.

“It trickles down to small choices of melodic delivery, rhythm and tempo that all add up to a musical character that feels truly French,” Muffitt said. “It really surprised me. It was a discovery. It’s been fun to come at it from this perspective.”

The Françaix concerto also gives Muffitt a chance to feature Yehuda, a defining voice of the symphony since he joined the organization in 2016.

“This opportunity to be up front is much deserved,” Muffitt said. “He brings such a vibrancy and energy and a broad expressive palette to the orchestra. This work plays beautifully into who he is as a musician.”

Yehuda was born in Israel, a nation with a vibrant musical culture, and took up the clarinet at his father’s suggestion. He started out playing jazz, under the influence of swing legend Benny Goodman. He quickly noticed that when Goodman wasn’t reigning as the “king of swing,” he played classical music with such authority that composers Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky and Bela Bartok all wrote works for him. Before long, Yehuda was hooked on classical music as well as jazz.

He still plays “a bit of jazz and a bit of klezmer” when he gets the chance, taking advantage of the clarinet’s wide range. “There’s a lot of crossover between classical and jazz,” Yehuda said. “It’s fun to dance between the two worlds, but I don’t have any pretensions to playing real jazz.”

The finicky reeds of the clarinet all too easily veer into horsey territory. Yehuda centers his own discipline, and that of his students at MSU, on shaping a beautiful tone.

He tells them to play one note, over and over, until their ears tune in on a sub-universe of overtones and intervals that are hidden to casual perception, like ultraviolet or infrared light.

“It’s easy to pick up the clarinet pretty quickly, and that’s why a lot of young people pick it up,” Yehuda said, “but then you hit a plateau. In order to really master the instrument, it takes a lifetime, if ever. It’s a constant journey.”

Yehuda has had plenty of memorable moments in Lansing.

“We’re blessed with many great parts in the symphonic literature,” he said. “Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony was a blast, and Brahms is really close to my heart. We’re going to play his second symphony at the end of this season and that’s going to be a pleasure.”

When he symphony did a pops concert of music by John Williams, Yehuda got one of his juiciest moments, playing the “Victor’s Tale” from Steven Spielberg’s “The Terminal.”

“It’s almost like a concerto for clarinet, in a pops concert,” Yehuda said. “That was really fun.”

Lansing Symphony Orchestra: Guy Yehuda, clarinet

$20-55

7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 18

Wharton Center Cobb Great Hall