Music Reviews

Mar 9, 2008 - The fabulous Italian pianist Fabio Bidini, the Reno Chamber Orhcestra and a triumphant Beethoven "Emperor" Piano Concerto

By Jack Neal

When the Reno Chamber Orchestra and its conductor Theodore Kuchar team up with Italian pianist Fabio Bidini for a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “The Emperor,” it’s royal fireworks time.

The first salvo of royal fireworks took place Saturday night (3/8/08) at Reno’s Nightingale Concert Hall before a large and appreciative audience.

Loaded with talent and brimming with warmth, Bidini is a keyboard Pavarotti - sans, of course, a huge, white brow-wiping handkerchief. Beethoven’s “Emperor” is the perfect vehicle to show off Bidini’s stellar craftsmanship and magnetism, especially given the first-rate collaborative fit Kuchar and the RCO provide. Orchestral support is exceptionally transparent with the winds and brasses adding just the right pinches of color. The strings are crisp, revealing details of orchestration often muddied in the heat of live performance.

Bidini is virtuosic and handles the concerto’s technical demands with ease. Even more impressive, the work’s nuances of style are presented in subtle good taste allowing listeners to sit back and wallow in the majesty and lyricism that makes Beethoven’s “Emperor” one of the great concertos in all piano repertory. Rhythmic punch helps. Bidini and the orchestra articulate with an I-got-rhythm panache worthy of George Gershwin at his most rhythmic.

Exciting grandeur is hard to surpass. Nor was it surpassed. But the refreshing heart-on-the-sleeve of Janacek’s “Adagio,” which opened the program, and the disarming playfulness of Richard Strauss’s “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme” (“The Bourgeois Gentleman”) nicely balances grandeur with charm.

Janacek’s Adagio is an expression most noted for its illusions of romantic fantasy. Highly theatrical, Janacek has a vast emotional range at his disposal. It’s Janacek’s emotional range Kuchar mines so affectingly for a short reading long on impact.

The Strauss is a tour de force for musical and technical achievement. Written in nine movements (only six were played), the suite – perfect for ballet - runs the gamut from simulated Lully to Strauss miniatures. There’s a death-defying solo for violin brought off with dash by concertmaster Ruth Lenz, and a sublime cello escape managed with elegance by principal cellist Peter Lenz. The sculpting of orchestral timbres and the detailed collective performances by the orchestra as a whole add up to a particularly lovely rendition of this charming suite.

The concert will be repeated Sunday (3/9/08) at 2 p.m.

With the exception of its April 2008 concerts, Reno Chamber Orchestra subscription concerts are performed at Nightingale Concert Hall, 900 North Virginia Street, Reno, Nevada. Next up for the Reno Chamber Orchestra: Mozart’s “Requiem,” with the University of Nevada, Reno Symphonic Choir. The Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, 2900 North McCarran Boulevard, Sparks, Nevada. Saturday, April 19 (2008) at 8 p.m. and Sunday, April 19 (2008) at 2 p.m. Theodore Kuchar will conduct. For information call 775-348-9413 or go online at RenoChamberOrchestra.org.