Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 2, 1995 TAG: 9505020097
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Parts of the performance were excellent. As for the other parts - let's just say that they don't belong in the catalog of this group's all-time greatest performances.
On the bright side, it was good to see that conductor and music director Glazebrook, always on the lookout for good but not overworked repertoire, chose the music from William Walton's ballet ``The Wise Virgins.'' The work is based on the biblical parable of the wise and foolish virgins, and the music has been little played since its premiere in the '40s, though it got a boost from a recent recording by Christopher Palmer.
For the ballet, Walton reworked some of the most beloved melodies of Johann Sebastian Bach. One critic said that, of all 20th-century ``big Bach'' transcriptions, these were the most acceptable to audiences whose consciousnesses have been raised by the early performance practice movement.
The same movement has made some conductors reluctant to perform Bach without period instruments, but in this regard Glazebrook has always displayed a robust common sense. Shortly before Saturday night's performance he noted that real music can never proceed from scholarship alone.
As for the performance, from the uncertain first attack to the final moments, it was a dicey proposition. There were premature and late entrances by players throughout the work, and the violin section in particular had difficulty simply playing together.
Worst of all were some horrendously out-of-tune woodwinds. In particular, one flute was verging on a quarter-tone off, so far off the mark that the beat frequency between this player and the others was clearly audible here and throughout the rest of the evening.
A mainly student-and-community orchestra should not be judged by the standards appropriate to the Philadelphia Orchestra or even the Roanoke Symphony, but every musician in a college-level ensemble should long ago have learned to tune his instrument and play reasonably in tune. The out-of-tune flute, oboe and clarinet players made for grating moments in otherwise lovely music.
On the other hand, the current incarnation of the NRVSO has fine trombone, horn and trumpet sections. The horns in particular acquitted themselves handsomely during the lovely horn chorale in ``Praise Be to God,'' the work's final movement.
Speaking of horns, Virginia Tech professor of horn Wallace Easter turned in a solid musical performance of the Horn Concerto No. 2 in E-flat Major, K. 417 of Mozart. What is there left to say about Wally Easter? His sure attack, beautifully mellow tone, clean articulation and delicate sense of dynamics make even a hunting call sound like a work of art. Despite a few small clams, his Mozart was the high point of the evening.
The most substantial work of the night was the great Symphony No. 8 in G Major, Op. 88 of Antonin Dvorak. The NRVSO's reading of the work cannot be accounted a success. There were good moments here and there - such as the pristine trumpet soli from Peter Pickett and Jason Price at the beginning of the fourth movement.
But these could not outweigh the numerous early and late entrances, entire sections not playing together, unmusical sawing from the violins in, for example, the faster passages of the second movement and - over and above everything else - the incredibly out-of-tune woodwind players. By the final movement the tuning disease had even spread to the cello section, which played with markedly sloppy intonation in an exposed passage.
The NRVSO's finest moment it wasn't, but at least it pointed up areas that need work in the coming months.
Despite it all, the performance earned a respectable round of applause, with Glazebrook called back to the podium twice.
Seth Williamson produces news features and a weekday afternoon classical music program on public radio station WVTF.
by CNB