THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 12, 1994 TAG: 9411120221
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By MARK MOBLEY, MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
The Virginia Symphony is celebrating its 75th season with masterworks. This weekend, it welcomes a master conductor.
Sixten Ehrling, the greatest Swedish conductor of the century, led a refined and vibrant reading of Tchaikovsky's beloved Fifth Symphony Friday at Chrysler Hall. He was joined by two young soloists for charismatic performances of music by Sibelius and Ravel.
Violinist Catherine Cho and mezzo-sporano Debra Kitabjian Every are the type of artists Virginia Symphony audiences are used to seeing - they are starting their careers with great promise. But like Joseph Silverstein and the respected Frenchman Jean Fournet, who have each appeared here in the past decade, Ehrling is a rarer visitor. At 77, he has been conducting concerts and opera for more than half a century, and his interpretations had youthful energy and mature security.
The orchestra, especially the strings, played with an amazing fullness and soft-edged but well-coordinated attacks throughout the program. (The sound was helped by an improved seating arrangement that moved the orchestra forward.) The violins were searing at the climax of the symphony's slow movement. Sibelius' Violin Concerto had a dark weight. But Ravel's delicate ``Sheherazade'' songs were transparent and carefully balanced.
In the song cycle, mezzo-soprano Every - an Ehrling protege - projected ease and total identification with the moods of Tristan Klingsor's poetry. She managed to make this most public form of expression seem like the most intimate kind of speech. The program books did not provide English translations for the audience.
Cho, a winner of multiple competitions, played with a characterful intensity, making this concerto seem more a meditation than a virtuoso showpiece. Busy music toward the end did not have strong rhythmic profile, so a few passages - especially the triumphant final note - were not emphatic. She should be compelling in a recital Monday at Old Dominion University.
Every and Cho were not the only soloists. This concert had more than the usual number of solo turns for the orchestra's principals, including the excellent concertmaster and first flutist, Vahn Armstrong and Debra Wendells Cross. David Wick handled the challenge of the familiar Tchaikovsky Fifth horn melody. ILLUSTRATION: MUSIC REVIEW
THE VIRGINIA SYMPHONY guest conductor Sixten Ehrling, violinist
Catherine Cho and mezzo-soprano Debra Kitabjian Every, Friday at
Chrysler Hall, Norfolk. The program will be repeated at 8 tonight.
Tickets, $15 to $34. Call 623-2310 or 671-8100.
VIOLINIST CATHERINE CHO will also participate in a chamber music
concert Monday at 8 p.m. at the Old Dominion University Fine and
Performing Arts Center. 683-4061.
by CNB