Music Reviews

Sep 20, 2009 - The Reno Chamber Orchestra season opener with the exceptional Joshua Smith as flute soloist

By Jack Neal

The Reno Chamber Orchestra opened its 2009-2010 season Saturday night (9/19/09) at Reno’s Nightingale Concert Hall. Flutist Joshua Smith was the orchestra’s formidable guest artist. At 39, Smith - who has been principal flutist with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra since he was twenty - came to Reno preceded by notices flaunting a stellar reputation as one of the world’s finest flutists. Much to his credit, he left town with his rave reviews for artistry and virtuosity intact.

Performing Lowell Liebermann’s intricate Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, and doing it well, is an achievement. The Liebermann isn’t a concerto in the traditional display-piece-for-athletic-virtuosity scheme of things. It hints in the direction of Wagnerian power, then says what it has to say without the affectation of merely showing off. It’s music that just happens to be as technically demanding as it is musically fulfilling. Smith scored wonderfully on all counts for an impressive presentation. With solid solo moments from RCO trumpeter Paul Lenz and RCO concertmaster Ruth Lenz, conductor Theodore Kuchar lead the orchestra in a first-rate collaboration.

The concert opened with Haydn’s Symphony No. 94 in G Major, the “Surprise.” As fresh as Kuchar’s readings almost always are, there was little surprise with Haydn’s “Surprise” by way of a truly translucent reading. Polished for the most part, the Haydn was workman-like and a pleasant enough curtain-raiser to mildly please.

Mendelssohn’s jubilant Symphony No. 4 in A Major, the “Italian,” was given the bubbly reading this buoyant work calls for. Kuchar’s rendition was marked by an airy, joyous sense of music making that’s close to what Mendelssohn ordered (should the well-mannered Mendelssohn ever have been in the business of ordering such things).

With lovely balances between orchestral choirs, nicely modulated pacing of each movement, and the Presto finale played at a somewhat more deliberate speed, it was all quite comfortably brought off. Some of the woodwind work may have been – well – a bit wooden, but not so with oboist Andrea Lenz and flutist Mary Miller who know full well how to play Mendelssohn with the whimsy of his “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

At the beginning of his seventh season with the Reno Chamber Orchestra, Kuchar continues to impress as a conductor of skill. The ability to pull off the tricky Liebermann concerto with what is in reality a part-time orchestra, as proficient as it is, is a cause for celebration. One looks forward, however, to something more than keen proficiency in the season ahead, and in the seasons to come. Passion for probing the depths of scores that provide real depth with more than sleight-of-hand (as Leonard Bernstein most always did), could make an evening with the Reno Chamber Orchestra a truly moving experience.

All Reno Chamber Orchestra subscription concerts are performed at Nightingale Concert Hall, 1664 North Virginia Street, Reno, Nevada. Next up for the Reno Chamber Orchestra October 17 and 18 (2009) the music of Handel (Concerto Grosso, Op. 6, No. 1), Shostakovich (Chamber Symphony after String Quartet No. 3, arranged by Barshai), Beethoven (Piano Concerto No. 4). With pianist Pavel Kaspar. Conducted by Theodore Kuchar. For information call 775-348-9413.