THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 24, 1995 TAG: 9509240078
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Music review
SOURCE: BY PAUL SAYEGH, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 41 lines
One benefit of the Virginia Symphony's dance series is the opportunity to hear ballet accompanied by live musicians rather than tape. The symphony's contribution to the Indianapolis Ballet Theatre's performance on Saturday night at Chrysler Hall added immensely to the performance's success, especially in the concluding ``Carmen.''
Using music from Bizet's opera ``Carmen,'' Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin wrote his ballet of the same name in 1967, for his wife Maya Plisetskaya, the Bolshoi's prima ballerina. Using only strings and percussion, Shchedrin produced a fascinating and powerful adaptation of a familiar favorite. The contrast between the strings' smoothness and the bright, penetrating sound of the percussion adds to the tension of the ballet.
Jerome Shannon, the Virginia Opera's assistant conductor, led a strong, rhythmically secure performance of Shchedrin's score. The strings played with accuracy and color, and were strongly supported by the percussion section. But, Chrysler Hall's acoustics tend to swallow string tone, robbing them of their full impact.
Earlier in the program, concertmaster Vahn Armstrong and pianist Charles Woodward performed Arvo Part's ``Fratres,'' used as the score for the ballet ``The Playing Field.'' Armstrong was especially impressive in the exposed, high violin passages. The balance with Woodward's full-sounding piano was excellent.
Music of a much lower quality made up the remainder of the program, although there was some appeal to Fikret Amirov's splashy ``A Thousand and One Nights.'' Sounding like an outtake from ``Lawrence of Arabia,'' the brief excerpt allowed conductor Shannon and the orchestra perhaps their most opulent moment of the night. by CNB