Press

By Stuart Low

A touch of Hollywood never hurts an anniversary bash. The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra on Thursday brought along 1930s movie composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold to kick off its 90th season in style.

Canadian-born violinist James Ehnes gave a sensational performance of Korngold’s Violin Concerto. It’s a magnificant patchwork of melodies that Korngold wrote for Hollywood movies, stitched together with colorful orchestration and virtuoso flourishes.

From the schmaltzy opening to the rambunctious finale, Ehnes dispatched his solos with ardor and steely control. He whizzed through tricky chromatic runs with spot-on intonation and added juicy slides to Korngold’s bittersweet tunes.

In the Romanze, he produced an ultra-sweet tone and a real sense of intimacy — as if singing a Richard Strauss aria to himself. He reveled in the Finale’s high-spirited monkeyshines, bringing this showpiece to a happy Hollywood ending and a long ovation in Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre.

Music director Arild Remmereit and the RPO supplied a sensitive accompaniment but occasionally drowned out Ehnes’ silver-toned Stradivari.

The RPO also toasted its anniversary by reviving music performed during its first season. Howard Hanson’s Symphony No. 1 “Nordic” (1922) was written shortly before George Eastman named him director of the new Eastman School of Music. It sometimes recalls Sibelius with its gusts of lyrical fervor and dark turbulence, but also shows a distinctly American dynamism and lush neo-Romanticism.

Remmereit made the most of Hanson’s grand gestures, deftly highlighting melodic strands from the thick orchestration. The RPO delivered gorgeous sound and pointed up the dramatic shifts in mood — such as the third movement’s brassy outbursts and dirge-like lament. Hanson’s epic outpourings were balanced by Eugene Goossens’ pocket-size tone poem, Tam o’Shanter. Half folksy, half spooky, it graphically depicts a hair-raising escape from a coven of witches. Goossens was hired by Eastman in 1923 as the RPO’s founding music director.

The evening began with Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Celebration Overture — an effective curtain raiser that transformed the RPO into a joyous chorus of bells. Its high-energy rendition was enthusiastically applauded.

Democrat and Chronicle

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