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festival report: sunriver music festival – week one

This past Friday (11 August) I was pleased to give my first public performance of the Martinu Rhapsody-Concerto with the Sunriver Festival Orchestra and conductor Lawrence Leighton Smith. I was quite happy with how it went (unusual for me, as those who know me well can attest), especially for a first time, and for it being the first time in a few years that I’ve gotten up in front of an orchestra. For those of you who have not had the experience of playing a concerto or concert piece with an orchestra, it’s a bit like dancing the tango with a piano strapped to your back. It’s going to be a bit easier if the orchestra is the Cleveland Orchestra or Berlin Philharmonic, but it’s a different animal altogether than playing with a pianist.

playing martinu concerto

The orchestra played beautifully, and the major tutti sections came across tremendously well, which is good since they really form the backbone of the work, emotionally speaking. It was also my most painless concerto appearance – the orchestra was wonderfully flexible and responsive, and Larry Smith is perhaps one of the best accompanying conductors working today, which may have a good deal to do with his long parallel career as a solo and collaborative pianist. While I was glad that my performance went well, I was even more gratified to find that the Martinu was a hit with both the musicians of the orchestra and with the audience. I hope that this piece will find a real following in the States, as it is virtually unknown even to most performing violists in this country. It is a tuneful, gorgeous, well-paced, and well-written work which shows the viola to its best advantage (it does not stray above ‘B’ above the staff in treble cleff), namely in its chocolatey and throaty middle and lower registers.

yay! done!

Other works we performed this past weekend were the First Suite for Orchestra by Tchaikovsky, which features a Miniature-March for upper strings and winds which is very much reminiscent of the Overture to The Nutcracker, and a delight to listen to (if not to play – very high stuff for the fiddles), Haydn’s Symphony 82 “The Bear”, Weber’s Overture to Oberon, the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No 5, and Schubert’s Symphony No 2. Of special interest was the Mozart Piano Concerto No 22 with Christopher O’Riley as soloist. He played with a beautifully light and varied touch, and performed a last movement cadenza of his own composition, with the earlier cadenzas which I couldn’t identify, but will find out about, since they were so interesting. In particular, the first movement cadenza had snippets of the Rondo Finale’s theme forshadowed, which I particularly enjoyed.

This just in: a quirky, funny, and dead-on review of the O’Riley concert – here is the link to the article.

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