Music Reviews

Sep 14, 2002 - David Itkin, Philip Ruder Shine in opener! And so does the Reno Chamber Orchestra!

By Jack Neal

Rarely does realization match anticipation, but it does happen and when it does everything comes up roses. Triumphantly, both came together at Nightingale Concert Hall Saturday night (9/14/2002) as the Reno Chamber Orchestra opened its most eagerly awaited season.

Conductor David Itkin, articulate of baton and musically eloquent, and violinist Philip Ruder, impassionedly virtuosic and musically assured, teamed with a re-awakened Reno Chamber Orchestra for a concert of vivid coloration, exotic lyricism and just plain great listening.

'Tis the season when four pretenders to the RCO's podium try to top one another for the nod to be the orchestra's next conductor and music director. That's what makes it all so eagerly awaited and exciting. Not that the orchestra's founding maestro, Vahe Khochayan, won't be missed. He will. But he'll still be around for those occasional forays with the orchestra he's nurtured so wonderfully for 29 seasons. Now it's on to new vistas and Mr. Itkin's excellent display of leadership is a tip-off that whoever wins, everybody - especially the orchestra and its fans - are going to be, as they were at Saturday's concert, winners.

The program itself - C.P.E. Bach's Sinfonia No. 5 in B minor (with Mr. Itkin at the harpsichord), Honegger's Symphony No. 4 "Deliciae Basilienses," Faure's Pavane, Op. 50, and Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor - was a pastiche of fresh sounds that never failed to enthrall.

The Bach was as it was expected to be: at once serene and busily baroque. What was different and immediately evident was how rich and burnished the orchestra's strings sound when sculpted with just the right set of symphonic instincts, instincts Mr. Itkin has in spades.

Mr. Itkin's credentials as a romantic revealed themselves in his exceptional treatment of Honegger's inventive, sometimes quirky, voluptuously lyric fourth symphony. Written soon after the end of World War II, when Europe's problems were by no means over, this wonderful piece contains shadows of a terribly dark period. But it's much more, and happily so; this rather short three-movement symphony allows rays of joy to peek through on a regular, radiant basis. "Serious fun," as one writer described it, the fourth is simply loaded with wonderful textures, lovely tunes and wit. Faultlessly shaped by Mr. Itkin, it was as faultlessly played by the orchestra with some very fine solo work by bassoonist Janis McKay and flutist Mary Miller (whose exquisite phrasing in the Faure was another of the concert's gorgeously rendered moments).

It's impossible to save the best for last in a concert of bests. Perhaps it's enough to say that Bruch's dazzling Violin Concerto No. 1, as displayed by the equally dazzling romantic virtuosity of Philip Ruder and the poetic collaboration of Mr. Itkin, hit another homerun way, way over the fence - as in east of the sun and west of the moon. Instant rapture met rhapsodic constancy for a thrill ride that won't soon, if ever, be forgotten. Rubato is a complex and subtle term in the musical lexicon, but in Mr. Ruder's and Mr. Itkin's scheme of things for this feverish concerto, rubato became plain as day. Mr. Ruder pushed and pulled his phrases with abandon, giving entranced listeners a passionate yet lyric performance on the verge of hysteria. Mr. Ruder's and Mr. Itkin's hysteria was greeted with a hysteria of the audience's making - standing whoops and cheers of a crowd of music lovers who just got their money's worth.

Now it's on to conducting candidate number two, Adrian Sunshine, and a program of Richard Strauss's Prelude to "Capriccio," Stamitz's Viola Concerto in D with violist Virginia Blakeman, Shostakovitch's "Tahiti Trot" and Schubert's Symphony No. 5.

Mr. Sunshine and Miss Blakeman will appear with the Reno Chamber Orchestra on Saturday, October 12, 2002. All Reno Chamber Orchestra subscription concerts are played at Nightingale Concert Hall on the University of Nevada Reno campus, 900 North Virginia Street, Reno, Nevada. For information call 775-348-9413.