I am medically advised to be cautious about attending crowded public events, including Richmond Symphony concerts. The orchestra is making video streams of its Symphony Series performances available to ticket-holders. The stream of this program was posted on Feb. 28.
Valentina Peleggi conducting
with Dinara Klinton, piano
& Richmond Symphony Chorus
Feb. 24-25, Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center
Piotr Ilych Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor is the apotheosis of the romantic musical warhorse, a work that has been a prime vehicle for generations of piano virtuosos (not all of them Russian – it was premiered in 1875 by a German, Hans von Bülow, in Boston), and remains one of the classical repertory’s most consistent crowd-pleasers.
The crowd at the Richmond Symphony’s latest mainstage program was certainly pleased with the performance of the Tchaikovsky by the Ukrainian pianist Dinara Klinton, and rightly so.
Klinton found just the right balance between pianistic brilliance in service to Tchaikovsky’s high-romantic rhetoric and sensitivity to the concerto’s lyrical currents, between high-volume power and almost hushed intimacy. The pianist also showed gratifying attentiveness to the orchestral colors and sound textures that make the piece more than a piano showcase with orchestral padding.
In the big first movement of the concerto, Klinton did not stint on the power chords and other grand keyboard gestures, but took the time to treat lyrical phrases flexibly, with a Chopin-like sense of fantasy, an approach that also enhanced her treatment of the central andantino. She brought high energy and rhythmic acuity, nicely spiced with playfulness, to the concerto’s finale.
The orchestra, led by Valentina Peleggi, its music director, provided rich, at times rhythmically punchy support to the pianist. Brightly expressive woodwind playing enhanced the performance.
Zachary Wadsworth, the Richmond-born composer now on the faculty of Williams College in Massachusetts, came home for the premiere of “Letter to the City,” his choral-orchestral setting of a poem by Joanna Lee that paints an atmospheric portrait of Richmond’s river-centric climate, cityscape and inhabitants.
Most of the atmosphere of the piece comes from its orchestration, a busily productive mosaic of wind, string and percussive tones that add color and texture to straightforwardly lyrical choral scoring.
Wadsworth (who has another premiere in store, on March 3 with the Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia) may or may not have had Maurice Ravel in mind while composing “Letter to the City;” but the piece proved to be highly complementary to Ravel’s “Daphnis et Chloé” Suite No. 2, which followed his premiere.
Ravel characterized his nearly hour-long ballet score as a “choreographic symphony,” and the second suite he extracted from the third act of the ballet is a miniature symphony with a wordless chorus woven into the orchestration.
Peleggi and the orchestra and chorus proved to be winning weavers. Their performance realized both the sonic haze and dapples of sunlight in this music – woodwinds, singly and collectively, being the primary dapplers – while maintaining its pulsing momentum and dynamism.
The stream of this program remains accessible until June 30. Access: $30. Details: (800) 514-3849 (ETIX); http://richmondsymphony.com
Letter V 