Music Reviews

Nov 7, 1999 - Lyricism at Nightingale with the Reno Chamber Orchestra

By Jack Neal

Lyricism was the order of the day Saturday night at Nightingale Concert Hall, when the Reno Chamber Orchestra played one of its most audience friendly concerts within recent memory. It was a program of lovely colorations, alluring textures, and rich melodies that made all that was played exceptionally accessible for both the casual and intent listener.

It was the orchestra's second concert of the season. Bassoonist William Wood was the soloist and was as comfortable playing Wolf-Ferrari's Suite Concertino in F, Op. 16, for Bassoon and Orchestra as his approach was fresh and charming - an appealing combination of notions that made this delightful suite sing from beginning to end.

Mr. Wood is as unpretentious about his art as he is musically astute and technically secure. The music of Wolf-Ferrari isn't noted for its depth, but who cares when what he wrote is so spontaneous and effervescent, qualities the bassoonist has in spades.

Telemann's Don Quixote Suite was equally as delightful. Conductor Vahe Khochayan bought into the work's vivid program (such vignettes as "Awakening of Don Quixote" and "Sighs of Love for Princess Aline") for one of the most charmed interpretations the maestro has offered RCO audiences in several seasons. The orchestra responded in kind for its most accurately and vibrantly played performance of the evening. Telemann's flair for pictorialism and wit are evidently tendencies that excited the curiosity of both conductor and orchestra giving the suite's six movements charmed lives and the suite in its entirety a jewel of a performance.

As if all that weren't enough, Saint-Saens's Prelude to "Le Deluge," a lovely and rhapsodic piece, was given the kind of mystic, haunting rendering that fits the spiritual atmosphere of the Book of Genesis that's the piece's inspiration. The soulful violin melody that is at the heart of this quiet, simply stated music was played with eloquence and serenity by Phillip Ruder.

John Lenz, already a jack of all musical trades (superb cellist, extraordinary French hornist), conducted Elgar's Introduction and Allegro for String Quartet and String Orchestra. Inspired by a Welsh melody, the Elgar is as robust and vigorous as the Welsh are as a people. Mr. Lenz brought a vision and vigor to the work, especially at its beginning, that captured what I presume Elgar had in mind for this rambunctious, sweeping music.

But alas, much of Elgar's music has a tendency to wear thin unless it's given large infusions of interpretive creativity, something that was not forthcoming. Rising above the material is what fine artists often bring to lesser works. The Elgar's beginning was its best moment. Then a sameness set in for a rather ordinary, and a bit ragged, presentation of what can be under better conditions a glittering concert piece. It wasn't bad this time out, just not inspired. Violinists Phillip Ruder and Bruce McBeth, violist Ginny Tilton and cellist Peter Lenz played the string quartet portions of the Elgar with dispatch.

The Reno Chamber Orchestra's annual presentation of Handel's "The Messiah" can be heard Saturday, December 11, 1999, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, December 12 at 2 p.m. "The Messiah" will feature soprano Katharine DeBoer, mezzo-soprano Sarah Blaze, tenor John Bellemer, baritone Gary Aldrich and the University of Nevada, Reno Symphony Chorus, Bruce Mayhall director. Vahe Kochayan will conduct. All subscription concerts of the Reno Chamber Orchestra are played at Nightingale Concert Hall on the University of Nevada, Reno campus, 900 North Virginia Street, Reno. For information call 775 348 9413.