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SYMPHONY REVIEW

Composer Pytor Tchaikovsky

WEISS TRIUMPHS IN ALL-TCHAIKOVSKY MARIN SYMPHONY OPENER

by John Metz
Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The Marin Symphony’s Oct. 4 concert, a repeat performance of Sunday’s season opener at the Marin Center, was an exciting celebration of the great Russian Romantic Tchaikovsky.

As a prelude, conductor Alasdair Neale invited Dan Smith, a former member of the Marin Symphony Youth Orchestra, onstage to guest conduct Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever. It was a spritely rendition full of bombast and dramatic dynamic contrasts.

To open the concert proper, the symphony performed Tchaikovsky’s inspired orchestral fantasy Capriccio Italien. The trumpets, led by principal Carole Klein, executed the opening fanfare with great command. And emerging from the opening, the strings, under Mr. Neale’s clear and articulate direction, played a soulful Italian folk tune. Such inspiring Italian melodies are the centerpiece of Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio, a piece written during a brief stint in Rome after his failed marriage. The music explored a multitude of Rome-inspired themes, eventually returning to the opening strings melody, and finally catapulting into a frenzied tarantella which Mr. Neale and his orchestra handled with grace and finesse, thus bringing this fine work to an exciting and gratifying close.

The evening’s highlight was Orion Weiss’ performance of the First Piano Concerto in B-flat, Op. 23. Led by principal Darby Hinshaw, the horns performed the majestic opening with great command and gusto, heralding the entrance of a soaring melody accompanied by the famous leaping piano chords, which span all octaves of the keyboard. In the first movement’s frequent solo interludes and final cadenza, Weiss proved himself a formidable pianistic talent. The melodious second movement was charming, and its unexpected prestissimo posed no challenges for Weiss, whose rendition was lightning fast and graceful. Indeed, Mr. Weiss’s technical mastery was evident throughout the entire performance, though perhaps most evident in the bravura octave passage preceding the final statement of the third movement’s sweeping cantabile melody. Mr. Weiss took these octaves at breakneck speed, utterly unaffected by their technical difficulty and fully able to express the grandness and heroism of Tchaikovsky’s music. It was Mr. Weiss’ masterful pianism and refined artistry that made this an unforgettable concert.

The famous Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture opened serenely with clarinets and bassoons in a chorale, and during the introduction the orchestra performed with tenderness, though at times failed to line up with the Mr. Neale’s downbeats. As tensions built, the opening erupted into the Montague-Capulet feud theme. The horns, who throughout the night delivered an exceptional performance, displayed here more fantastic playing. And the unforgettable love theme, played first by English horn and then restated in the strings, had the audience swooning. The piece ended with a funeral march and requiem in which the violins played the love theme one last time, but this time as a bittersweet remembrance. The orchestra’s rendition of this coda was nothing short of tear-jerking.

As a fitting finale to this Tchaikovsky commemoration, the 1812 Overture was performed. Here they pulled out all the stops to deliver a heroic and thunderous event finale. And it was quite the workout for the brass section, which performed admirably. Tchaikovsky uses the French and Russian Empire national anthems to depict the 1812 military conflict. Eventually the Russian anthem “God Save the Tsar” wins over La Marseillaise, bringing the work to the final boisterous coda, celebrating the Russian victory. Or in the context of this performance, celebrating the genius of the composer. Mr. Neale and his orchestra were unrestrained in this booming and exhilarating finale which had the audience enthralled and utterly captivated.

It all seemed to prove that with Tchaikovsky you can never have too much of a good thing.