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Virginian-Pilot,
September 11
In debut for season, symphony in top form
BY LEE TEPLY CORRESPONDENT
The region’s classical music season officially began this weekend with a pair of concerts by the Virginia Symphony Orchestra.
Saturday evening at Chrysler Hall, Music Director JoAnn Falletta led a performance that showed the group to be at top form and newly energized after a period of rest.
The all-Russian program began with Mussorgsky’s tone poem “Night on Bald Mountain,” and it was immediately clear that the orchestra was well-prepared. Transitions between the several sections were under control. In the clean textures, Falletta highlighted many of the smallest details.
Despite this level of polish, the performance did not seem quite complete. Where was the force behind the music, aside from the sheer volume? Where was the tension from the threat of demonic power? And who could conjure up the frightening witches in the music’s story?
Enter Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, as soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Her approach was not the standard combination of amazingly fast figuration and huge legato tone. Of course, she flew through the virtuosic display passages with apparent ease, but in the more melodic passages, she drew the audience inside her with the most delicate and introspective sound.
It came to mind that, since the late Middle Ages, the fiddle was associated with the devil, who used it to lure his victims to their demise. The Satanic connection to the violin lasted well into the 20th century.
In the case of Tchaikovsky, whose writing for the instrument is difficult, only superpowered virtuosos dare attempt the piece.
Salerno-Sonnenberg’s first notes were the soft ones, played with a touching sense of vulnerability. She was pulling in every ear to focus on the subtlest details of her interpretation. This same control over the audience lasted through the first movement’s long cadenza, thoughtfully paced, but played with a spontaneity that made it sound like improvisation.
After a sublimely beautiful slow movement, the orchestra began the finale with the explosive force that had been missing in the Mussorgsky piece.
Then came one of the orchestra repertoire’s greatest challenges: Stravinsky’s 1913 ballet score, “The Rite of Spring.” Falletta and the orchestra have done it before, but this time there was so much more depth, growing out of impressive security in all technical matters.
The greatly enlarged forces were kept in balance, with only occasional covering of significant lines in the lower woodwinds. Solo lines from every section were played with care and dramatic purpose.
Most important was the pacing of the many sections that are tied together in this long, dramatic experience. Falletta kept a sense of proportion between the score’s many climactic explosions, saving the most powerful one for the end. It was, as Stravinsky intended, great theater, even without all the ballet’s visual elements.
The piece, all about the rebirth of the natural world in a new season, was a great way to begin the new artistic season.
A high standard has been set. The symphony seems prepared to meet the challenge.
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The Virginia Symphony Orchestra with a complement of 79 professional musicians under the direction of Grammy-nominated Music Director JoAnn Falletta performs 140 concerts annually, reaching 200,000 concert goers every season in venues throughout the region. Our education and outreach programs reach 53,000 students and adult learners every year. The Virginia Symphony Orchestra is the cultural cornerstone of the performing arts in Hampton Roads.
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