United States Chin, Elgar, Rimsky-Korsakov: Zuill Bailey (cello), Pasadena Symphony Orchestra / François López-Ferrer (conductor). Ambassador Auditorium, Pasadena, 11.2.2023. (LV)
Unsuk Chin – ‘subito con forza’
Elgar – Cello Concerto in E minor
Rimsky-Korsakov – Scheherazade
It was a live performance of heroes at Ambassador Auditorium on Saturday evening. Zuill Bailey introduced an exhilarating virtuosity to Elgar’s Cello Concerto that just about overcame its deep disappointment. Associate Concertmaster Amy Hershberger stepped into the concertmaster’s seat on the final minute and made a radiantly harmless Scheherazade. Principal bassoonist Rose Corrigan’s woody sound and eloquence recalled the times when Michael O’Donovan held the seat. And François López-Ferrer, making his debut with the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra, led a grandly romantic efficiency of the Rimsky-Korsakov that recaptured a number of the glory from the time of Jorge Mester.
The live performance began with Unsuk Chin’s ingeniously devised ‘subito con forza’ which the Pasadena Symphony and López-Ferrer put along with the sensible sense of timing and complex precision wanted to make the references to Beethoven explode like landmines by means of the five-minute soundscape. Written for the 2020 Beethoven anniversary 12 months, it was an ideal curtain raiser for our time. The younger Spanish-American conductor’s vitality on the rostrum and the quick, audacious enjoying made understanding Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture from the ‘Emperor’ Concerto secondary to the expertise of getting your ears tuned up for the music to return.
In the Elgar Cello Concerto that adopted, Bailey introduced a larger-than-life, Errol Flynn attraction and presence that infused the whole lot he did and even, at occasions, overwhelmed his big approach. Bailey’s Elgar had a knight errant’s noble goal and angle, and he launched the opening chords with such charming sweep and thrust that the viewers was his from that second on. With the assistance of López-Ferrer and the orchestra, Bailey and his cello projected forcefully into the corridor with magnificent goal, poise and an general sense of what the Concerto is all about.
After the explosive ending of the Elgar which had the complete home on their toes, Bailey performed two encores, the primary of which was the Theme from Schindler’s List. For the second, he selected the primary motion of Bach’s first Cello Suite, throughout which he paused on the brink of the enduring drone sections with a understanding grin earlier than surging forward triumphantly to the tip.
With López-Ferrer within the driver’s seat, the Symphony did some surging of its personal all through Scheherazade. It reminds one in all how concurrently intimate and Technicolor symphonic music might be on the Ambassador, the place I nonetheless keep in mind Karajan’s chamber music-like efficiency of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic. Associate Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and beforehand a Dudamel Conducting Fellow on the Los Angeles Philharmonic, López-Ferrer paid severe consideration to the orchestra and let the music do the speaking. Hershberger made an eloquent case for a kinder, gentler and much more seductive heroine and, along with cellist Michael Collins and the fantastic principals within the woodwinds and brass, lavished love and extensive swaths of colour on the solos.
Laurence Vittes