THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 19, 1994 TAG: 9409190059
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Concert Review
SOURCE: BY MARK MOBLEY, MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
What was it like? It was like Hatfields dancing with McCoys. It was like Chuck Robb and Doug Wilder making up. It was a thing once deemed impossible and it happened.
It was Walter Noona conducting the Virginia Symphony.
Sunday at the Virginia Beach Pavilion Theater, Noona led the orchestra that fired him in 1983. The firing was the first shot in a bitterly fought pops war that lasted a decade, until Noona's rival orchestra folded with financial problems.
But this concert was not about the past. ``Those things are best left in the dust,'' Noona said after Saturday morning's rehearsal. ``Let's not resurrect them. Let's move forward.''
The concert was instead a celebration of Noona the veteran entertainer, back from a year off and recovered from a serious illness. In the show and the two long rehearsals he was enthusiastic, vigorous, sweaty and just plain glad to be back. He played dizzy runs on the piano and danced on the podium to illustrate the music.
``It's like an electric plug that plugs in and sends energy through my body,'' said Noona, 62. ``I get all excited. I love it.'' His only concession to age was staring at a score and asking the orchestra, ``You ever notice how the numbers are getting smaller and smaller when they print these things?''
Noona said he was surprised and delighted when the orchestra asked him to open a new series at the Pavilion Theater. That is where his Virginia Beach Pops performed, sometimes while the Symphony Pops were next door in the Pavilion Convention Center.
``I've really missed conducting here,'' he said. ``This past Christmas was the first Christmas since 1964 I hadn't done a concert.''
Noona's association with the symphony stretches back to his teens and its concerts as the Norfolk Symphony at the Center Theater. He appeared as a soloist and eventually became the ensemble's resident pianist.
Noona was later hired as a pops conductor. In 1983, unhappy with the orchestra's contract renewal offer, he went to the Virginia Beach Arts and Humanities Commission to discuss forming his own Virginia Beach-based orchestra. The symphony board then voted to dismiss him.
Noona was impressed with today's Virginia Symphony. ``It's a wonderful orchestra,'' he said. ``I got through a lot of music today. The orchestra we had back in the '80s could not have gone through the program as easily as we did today. I think Maestro Falletta is doing a wonderful job and has brought it to a new level.''
Though Noona had intense personality conflicts with players a decade ago, the new edition of the Virginia Symphony is filled with new faces. Half the orchestra had never seen him before. All of them applauded him at the end of the concert.
Symphony violinist Linda Hurwitz played a few Virginia Beach Pops dates. ``I enjoy his piano playing,'' she said. ``It was fun. I had a good time.
``He's enjoying working with us. This is his show. It has his personality attached to it.''
His folksy charisma was what the symphony wanted to boost its flagging ticket sales at the Beach. The Virginia Beach Pops concerts were sold-out lovefests. His wife, Carol Noona, who managed the orchestra, once called it ``a special little Camelot.''
Sunday's concert didn't sell out but it drew an excited crowd that greeted Noona with a standing ovation. Virginia Anderson, a magistrate from Kill Devil Hills, N.C., drove up just for the performance. Once she went all the way to Baltimore to see him conduct.
``It was a wonderful show,'' Anderson said. ``In fact, I clapped so much one of the people sitting next to me asked me was I part of the group. I enjoy the type of music he conducts.''
Sunday the music was about ``Sophisticated Ladies of Stage and Screen.'' The first half was light classics, with excerpts from ``Carmen'' and ``Sleeping Beauty.'' Noona conducted from memory with emphatic gestures.
In the second half he switched to jazz and Broadway, music from Duke Ellington and ``Annie.'' He wrapped up the program with a virtual concerto on ``My Fair Lady'' themes, garnering another standing ovation.
The encore was a bouncing ``Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.'' Gray heads bobbed throughout the hall. Anderson and her friends smiled as the cellos spun their instruments.
At the last chord, Noona jumped a foot straight up in the air - and about 50, or at least 10, years backwards. ILLUSTRATION: A return engagement
CHRISTOPHER REDDICK/Staff
Guest conductor Walter Noona leads the Virginia Symphony at a
rehearsal for Sunday's concert at the Virginia Beach Pavilion
Theater. The orchestra had dismissed Noona in 1983. The firing was
the first shot in a pops war that lasted a decade.
by CNB