THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602250101
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Music review
SOURCE: BY LEE TEPLY, SPECIAL TO THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
On Friday evening, the Prague Chamber Orchestra played in Ogden Hall in the fine series sponsored by the Hampton Arts Commission. With no conductor to guide them, the 36 musicians played with a commitment and sense of ensemble. But they went well beyond that goal to produce a refined performance filled with the details and nuances more often associated with an intimate string quartet.
Rossini's overture to ``L'Italiana in Algeri'' opened the program and served to show off the orchestra's strengths. With few exceptions, the strings played with great precision, the bright sound from the first violins supported by the focused and well-tuned cellos. For whatever reason, either weaker players or the room's acoustics, the violas and second violins had neither the brightness nor the clarity of their colleagues.
Beginning with the oboe melody in the slow introduction, the several wind soloists projected nicely into the room. They tossed their phrases back and forth in a congenial dialogue among friends shared directly with the listeners. The effect was more immediate than when a conductor stands in control, separating the musicians from the audience.
In the following work, Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24, the same qualities and an attention to detail gave the orchestra more prominence than is usually heard in a concerto. It was an equal partner with pianist Simone Pedroni.
The young Van Cliburn Competition winner gave form to the music with carefully drawn ``singing'' melodies and nicely shaped scales. The last movement's several sections were clearly defined. Elsewhere there was a feeling of improvisation, as if the solo part was being created on the spot. This was indeed what happened in Mozart's time, when the piano parts of concertos were played with different details at each performance.
Pedroni went a little further in the first movement's cadenza. This too sounded improvised, as different ideas were explored and worked out. It was in fact the writing of Ferruccio Busoni, the great pianist/composer of the early 20th century. The cadenza was thus a bit of an anachronism, using techniques and even notes outside of Mozart's world. But it was dramatically effective and convincingly performed.
This world was explored further in Pedroni's encore, an early piece by Rachmaninoff. Here the left-hand melody was played with a rich tone and flexible rubato.
Although the two pieces after intermission were from the same sound world as the Busoni and Rachmaninoff, they looked back to the eighteenth century. Grieg's ``Holberg Suite'' is constructed like the dance suites of Bach. The orchestra fared better in the slow movements, taking advantage of the calmer mood to shape each phrase and to produce their warmest tone. The fast movements were somewhat rushed, with little acknowledgment of cadences.
The energy level seemed to dip in Prokofiev's ``Classical Symphony.'' In the first movement, everything was correct, but perhaps too carefully and slowly played. By the last movement, all power was restored in the perpetual motion that rushed in a controlled frenzy to the end.
The brilliant playing style first heard in the Rossini overture was again present in the first encore, the last movement of Mozart's ``Haffner Symphony.'' In the second encore, the orchestra let its eastern-European heritage show in a Hungarian dance by Brahms, played with both flair and attention to detail. by CNB