Music Reviews

Feb 27, 2006 - The Reno Chamber Orchestra with cellist Zuill Bailey, a concert of near perfection

By Jack Neal

Perfection, like grade inflation, is a much overused accolade. So the recent February pair of Reno Chamber Orchestra concerts will just have to settle for being near perfection.

Saturday night’s concert (2/25/06) got two spontaneous standing ovations based largely on the magnetism and exhilaration of cellist Zuill Bailey’s performances of Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra.

Largely based on Bailey’s impeccable and exciting playing, but not wholly based on the cellist’s exceptional talent. Conductor Theordore Kuchar and the Reno Chamber Orchestra were first-rate collaborators on the Haydn and Tchaikovsky and brought their share of orchestral dazzle and sumptuousness to Ernest Bloch’s intense and lovely Concerto Grosso No. 1, and Johann Christian Bach’s Symphony for Double Orchestra in E-flat Major.

It was a snapshot program grandly designed to give an overview of music s worlds of classicism, modernism and romanticism. The Bach Symphony for Double Orchestra has enough invention and elegance to satisfy the most let’s-not-move beyond the 1800s reactionary concertgoer. Are there any still extant? Not too many judging from the audience’s mildly tepid response. What a fresh, together piece and what a fresh, together presentation it got.

The Bloch, like Disney, is its own wonderful world of color. From its vivid prelude, through its serenely gorgeous Pastorale and Rustic Dances, to its robust fugue, Kuchar elicited a rainbow of textural and harmonic colorations. The brashness of Kuchar’s approach worked splendidly with Bloch’s intensity, rhythmic vigor, and penchant for the unusual in orchestral coloration. The passion of the performance moved the Bloch from inventive revelation to intense drama. In short, it was a blast to experience.

Zuill Bailey was also a blast to experience.

Watching Bailey play is like watching Johnny Depp in “Pirates” of the Carribean. Casually dressed in dark slacks, a shirt with open collar, and what looked like a brown blazer, the magnetic Mr. Bailey and cello create an instant rapport with listeners. This exceptional cellist plays with the same personal identification with his craft that great singers have with the intimacy of their voice. Take the greatest singer you know who touches your heart with their singing, then transfer that wonderful sense of bonding with Bailey’s cello playing and the rapture of one can be understood as the rapture of the other.

The Haydn was impeccably brought off with loads of athletic virtuosity. Streamlined and quickly paced, Bailey, Kuchar and orchestra set sail on Haydn’s wonderful adventure for a breezy classical ride.

Far from breezy, but nonetheless its own whirlwind adventure, Tchaikovsky’s homage to the Mozart era - his Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra - was also a ride to remember. The spareness of Tchaikovsky’s scoring and the immediacy of the melodic flow were the perfect vehicle to glue audience to cellist, and cellist to cello, orchestra and conductor for a presentation of rapture and technical wizardry that lead to, as one musicologist called it, delightful nostalgia.

Much like Judi Dench in “Mrs. Henderson Presents”, a movie for nostalgia lovers (and and fans of Ms. Dench) that can be seen over and over again, Bailey, Kuchar and the Reno Chamber Orchestra’s take on the Tchaikovsky is a take that can be heard over and over again. It was terrific.

Bailey is young, gifted, highly musical, easy to get along with and handsome. If that isn’t a recipe for success, what is?

This series of Reno Chamber Orchestra concerts was performed at Nightingale Concert Hall, 900 North Virginia Street, Reno, Nevada, Saturday, February 25, 2006, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, February 26, at 2 p.m. The next series of Reno Chamber Orchestra concerts will be Saturday, March 25 and 26, and will feature the music of Faure and Brahms and the orchestra s yet-to-be-selected college concerto competition winner. For information call 775-348-9413.