Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 13, 1993 TAG: 9310130066
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Sikes, who soloed Monday night when the RSO performed Victoria Bond's "Urban Bird" at the Roanoke Civic Center, told an interviewer last week it was Randolph's recording of "Yakkety Sax" that first piqued her interest in the saxophone. It was only when her father forbade her to play in the rough roadhouses of her native Texas that she began classical training in the instrument.
Even though her very first note in Bond's jazz-influenced piece wasn't quite clean, Sikes went on to demonstrate that she left Boots Randolph behind long ago when it comes to technique.
"Urban Bird," completed only this year, is a concerto for alto saxophone and orchestra, and it is unabashedly program music. Bond pictured a New York City subway musician whose lyrical and bluesy solos are nearly overwhelmed by the arrival and departure of subway trains.
On the plus side, Bond's evocation of the relentless power and jangle of trains can stand comparison with Arthur Honegger's "Pacific 231." The piece, with its Ivesian polyrhythms has a jagged power and raw energy at its best moments.
On the other hand, this listener and at least a few others yearned to hear the saxophone soaring over the rest of the orchestra in the full-throatedly lyrical final sections of the piece, but the solo instrument was mostly confined to quieter passages. Sikes was summoned back for two curtain calls at the work's conclusion.
It was a joy to hear Bond and the RSO do the Paul Hindemith masterpiece, the Symphony "Mathis der Maler." This beautiful work with its noble brass and woodwind sonorities is among the finest music written in the 20th century.
By and large it was an excellent performance, with the exception of a few points in the first movement and about 20 bars into the third when the orchestra was simply not playing together. But the middle movement, inspired by Mathias Grunewald's altarpiece of the entombed Christ, contained some of the most beautiful playing I have ever heard from the RSO.
Flutist Carol Noe and oboist Valarie Mullison got special recognition from Bond at the piece's end.
The post-intermission half of this longer-than-usual concert was devoted to the last and greatest of Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky's six symphonies, his "Symphonie Pathetique."
Bond and the RSO gave the nearly full hall vintage, heart-on-the-sleeve Tchaikovsky in a competent performance that was evidently the audience favorite of the night.
Bond, in a display of virtuosity, conducted the entire symphony without a score.
Coming at the end of a hard night, some of the horn players and the trumpets were frankly fatigued in this piece and at times sounded like it. But it was melodies from this piece that not a few listeners were whistling and humming on the way out to the parking lot.
Seth Williamson produces feature news stories and a weekday classical music program on public radio station WVTF (89.1 FM) in Roanoke.
by CNB