Music Reviews

Sep 25, 2006 - Reno Chamber Orchestra Opens its new season with Pianist Sergei Babayan

By By Jack Neal

For symphony fans, season openers are always eagerly awaited events. Making this year's Reno Chamber Orchestra opening even more eagerly awaited was the return, for his fourth season, of conductor Theodore Kuchar, who performs wonders with both the orchestra and with the excitement he brings to programming.

Dvorak's Legends, 1 and 3, Mozart's Divertimento in D Major, and Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor continued to explore this maestro's talent for providing new and exciting works seldom, if ever, heard in Reno (the Dvorak and Mozart), and the well-known and the monumental (the Brahms).

Pianist Sergei Babayan, one of Reno's most favored concert pianists, was on hand for the Brahms. He brought enormous amounts of bravura to this dark and foreboding work. It was a heavy-handed bravura that captured the more macho aspects of the concerto, sans a lighter touch that might have captured more of its lyricism.

The orchestra, influenced by the impeccable, tasteful leadership of its conductor, balanced Babayan's dark passion for rapture, with a much lighter passion for rhapsodic sheen. It was an odd combination that worked well enough to please Saturday's (9/23/06) large audience at Reno's acoustically subtle Nightingale Concert Hall. Heavy-handed virtuosity won the day over subtle musicianship and received a standing ovation for its high testosterone levels of loud notes.

The Adagio movement, with its built-in serenity (pianissimo), was haunting in its quiet solitude - a wonderful island of peace surrounded by two thrashingly profound movements.

But what fun! Pianistically speaking those two profound movements with so much flash and dash of lots of notes (movements 1 and 3) were brought off magnificently with an old-school Lisztian athleticism, punctuated with just the right amounts of old-school Lisztian charm.

The Dvorak lilted its way from dance to dance – a wonderful palette of rhythms, colors, and textures richly brought to life by an orchestra that knows ethnic charm when its playing it and how to convey unrelenting fervor without going over the top. The Mozart was glittering, crisp, and elegant, a genuine diversion in music as it was intended to be.

The orchestra played in its usual top form, with concertmaster Phillip Ruder, flutist Mary Miller, oboist Andrea Lenz , bassoonist Christin Schillinger, and the entire French horn section (John Lenz, Peter Adlish, Kris Engstrom, Emily Hollenbach) providing a concert full of excellent individual moments.

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. The orchestra's opening series of concerts, with pianist Sergei Babayan, were played Saturday, Sep. 23 at 8 p.m. and Sunday Sep. 24 at 2 p.m., 2006.

The orchestra's next series of concerts, Oct. 8 and 9 (2006), features Ellen dePasquale playing Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5, plus Tippett's "Sellinger's Round," Janacek's "Idyll," Haydn's Symphony No. 87. Conducted by Theodore Kuchar. For information call 775-348-9413.