BY ED BRUCE edbrucevegas@yahoo.com
THIS JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER AND BETTER !
Conductor David Itkin in his fourth year here, already established as one of my heroes brought another hero to the stage Saturday night ! Classic composer Samuel Adler and Itkin spared verbally in the preshow lecture-info series, an event in itself and just magnificent. This should have been a class requirement for music students to learn music history from these two giants....stories...history...humor...friendship...insights about life and composers and the expected preview of the evenings music lineup.
More and more patrons are showing up for this and tonight it was super special with Adler making the great first impression on me....his world premiere...Drifting on Wind and Currents...a Poem for Orchestra...commissioned in honor of Gladys Aronow was almost too brief at 12 minutes but had a lovely opening passage in perfect tone !
Itkin and Adler could have been Martin and Lewis and went on for hours with this wonderful music verbiage. This incidentally started right on time and got to 25 minutes way too soon !
After Adler's premiere we again got Bruch's Violin Concerto No 1 in G minor, Op. 26 !
This piece was played on this stage a couple of months ago and has some similarities to Tchaikovsky's violin concerto....that being heavy violin and well set to orchestra.
Bruch's piece was great before and also great tonight with 18 year old Lauri Liu the soloist...such talent and poise in this young woman....she looked pretty sharp too in a pink full length shoulderless dress and terrific long black hair....oh the the youth...there is hope in the world when you can play like Liu does !
After intermission Tchaikovsky...Symphony No. 4 in f minor, Op. 36....one of my favorites...sometimes (like tonight) they pick out my favorite music without even asking me ? Tchaikovsky on top of his game for this....(but Tchaikovsky always on top of his game as the second greatest composer of all time). Loved the third movement Scherzo, almost all pizzicato.....32 violins and violas, 8 cellos and 6 bass all plucking away in wonderfull fashion...a highlight to any music menu.
Both this was great stuff...nice crowd...preshow started on time...concert stated ontime and Ham in perfect acoustics as usual for a perfect night.
ONLY PERFECT 100 A+
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