Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 12, 1995 TAG: 9509120038
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-5 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
For the second year in a row, the verdict is: Mission accomplished.
The New River Pops - which is a core group of Roanoke Symphony players supplemented by the cream of Blacksburg-area musicians - turned in a beautifully played and crowd-pleasing Boston Pops-style performance Saturday evening in the Squires Commonwealth Ballroom at Virginia Tech. Every work on the program was a certified classical music monster hit, with the possible exception of the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1. This lesser-known selection justified its lack of warhorse status by serving as the debut of a phenomenal 13-year-old pianist.
Kicking off the evening was Franz von Suppe's venerable "Light Cavalry" overture, the prelude to a now-forgotten 1866 operetta. With its galloping rhythms and lyrical gypsy interlude, the piece got a brisk and exhilarating run-through by the New River Pops, with special bows for clarinetist David Widder and trumpeters Allen Bachelder and Peter Pickett.
"The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba" from Handel's oratorio "Solomon" is one of the three or four most-familiar baroque pieces ever written. It was a good vehicle for oboists Margo Easter and Kate Nettles, but lacked energy from start to finish and was the only piece on the program that disappointed.
The suite from Dmitri Kabalevsky's opera "The Comedians" brimmed with solo opportunities for almost every instrument in the orchestra. As with most examples of the Soviet Realism school of composition, it was tuneful, accessible, straightforward and colorful.
After the first of two intermissions, 13-year-old Jeanne Schumann, a Blacksburg High School ninth-grader, soloed in the Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25, of Felix Mendelssohn. It is entirely possible that the Commonwealth Ballroom crowd witnessed the professional premiere of a player who will one day be a name to contend with in musical circles. Schumann is gifted with the kind of talent that is rare even among professional musicians.
No concert performance is ever perfect, and this was no exception, of course. Schumann bobbled a few of the quicksilver runs in the first movement, and she needed more power in fortissimo passages in the first and third movements. But no reasonable person is unwilling to forgive a little nervousness in a performer this young; and as for power, the willowy teen-ager looked as if she weighed barely more than her piano stool - power will come as she gains her growth.
In the meantime, she is an impressive performer, indeed. She already possesses a mature technique. As one professional musician remarked before the concert, "She's only 13, but she plays like she's 25." Once past the opening bar butterflies, she raced through the glittering first-movement runs with confidence.
It was in the lyrical second movement, however, that Schumann showed us a sensitive and meditative musical intelligence. Throughout this andante, she played exquisitely. By the time she repeated the main theme in octaves over tremolo strings, she had the ballroom crowd in her hip pocket. Schumann raced through the bravura passages of the finale in a blaze of fireworks, with no trace of nerves, earning an immediate standing ovation. The audience demanded her return three times, and she was presented with a bouquet by her longtime teacher Teresa Ehrlich.
After the second intermission, the New River Pops performed Rodney Russell Bennett's familiar arrangement of "The Sound of Music" by Richard Rodgers. This was followed by three Boston Pops specialties. Aaron Copland's arrangement of "Simple Gifts" is titled "Variations on a Shaker Melody" and is an almost verbatim quotation from "Appalachian Spring." The "Chicken Reel" was arranged by legendary Boston Pops whiz Leroy Anderson and ended with a rooster crow on solo mouthpiece from clarinetist David Widder. The rousing finale was Kenneth J. Alford's "Colonel Bogey" (better known as the theme from "The Bridge on the River Kwai"), a Boston Pops signature piece under Arthur Fiedler. Virginia Tech trombonist Jay Crone sounded like a one-man trombone section throughout and there was enthusiastic whistling from the audience, led by a virtuoso whistler at my own table.
Glazebrook, promising that his players would return again in a year, encored with the "Radetsky March" of Johann Strauss the Elder and "Memories" from Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cats" to wind up a generous concert that lasted well over two-and-a-half hours.
by CNB