Long Beach, California / Enero 2009

Tchaikovsky soars to new heights under concertmaster Roger Wilkie

By John Farrell, Special to the Press-Telegram
Posted: 02/02/2009 05:27:24 PM PST

All orchestras have personalities, and, over time, those personalities become easily recognizable, like an old friend's face.

The Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, in the middle of its eighth year under the baton of Music Director Enrique Arturo Diemecke, has such a personality.

There's a sense of family, with a core group of musicians who have played together for years and have become the kind of supportive musical team for which conductors and audiences always hope.

There's a sense of power, as well, for Diemecke has never shied away from the big orchestral sound and its challenges, and the symphony has learned to provide sheer power - elegant power, shimmering power - with the same easy agility a baseball slugger uses to drive a fastball over the wall.

Both the power and the family connection were on display Saturday at the Terrace Theater of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center, as Diemecke led his band through an evening of the powerful orchestral delights of three big pieces of music by Tchaikovsky, that late 19th-century master of orchestral passion and instrumental grace.

The family connection was most apparent in the brilliant Violin Concerto, with the orchestra's long-time concertmaster, Roger Wilkie, as soloist.

Diemecke has long made a point of showcasing orchestra principles as soloists, and this wasn't Wilkie's first time in front of the orchestra. It may well have been his best, though. It is hard to remember a performance of this popular concerto, or many others equally as well-known, delivered with such confidence and power and physical presence.
From the start, with his introduction of the moving primary theme of the concerto, it was clear Wilkie's violin was going to rule the performance. His instrument has a powerful, dominant voice that was always strong against even the most powerful orchestral passages, always crisp and bursting with energy.

Equally important was Wilkie's relaxed, almost playful approach to the work. He clearly felt confident in his musical family's support, and in Diemecke's cooperation, and there were moments when he seemed almost casual about rests, plucked notes and passages full of high-speed fingerings and double stops.

It was exhilarating to watch him, sometimes serious, sometimes playful.

His reading of the solo first-movement cadenza was a lengthy moment of bravura technique, surpassing lyricism and deep emotion. Diemecke asks that his audiences not applaud between movements of a work, and they usually respect his wishes, but this first movement provoked applause so lengthy Diemecke had to gesture for quiet before the work continued to its brilliant finish.

The evening opened with the dark-colored tone poem "Francesca da Rimini," a work that calls for a big orchestra and a huge sound, violent and even a bit frightening as Tchaikovsky tells the story of a woman condemned to hell in Dante's "Inferno" for making love to her husband's brother.

An imaginative listener might hear a little autobiography in the work and can't miss the laments of those in the swirling smokes and mist of one of the lowest rings of hell.

Diemecke calls this one of his favorite works, and he led it with precise detail and perfect control.

The evening ended with the composer's "Little Russia" symphony, his second, a work inspired by the Ukraine, known as "Little Russia" then, and filled with tunes that are drawn from or inspired by folk music.

Though the work was written early in his career, it still has all the hallmarks of Tchaikovsky's orchestral writing: brilliant brass passages, shimmering effects in the woodwinds, a rich use of the strings and plenty of powerful but carefully used percussion.

Principal French Horn Joseph Meyer played the daunting and exposed open horn passages with perfection, and the dance-filled third movement was a delight of rhythmic energy.

John Farrell is a Long Beach freelance writer. More of his articles can be read at http://byjohnfarrell.typepad.com.

Críticas de Long Beach, California (enero 2009)

LBSO Leaves No Room For Criticism

By Jim Ruggirello
Downtown Gazette ~ Grunion Gazette

This is getting boring.

The Long Beach Symphony is playing at such a high level these days, and Saturday's all-Tchaikovsky program at the Terrace Theater exhibited such a really astonishing quality of execution, that they leave us critics with very little to criticize. I hate it when that happens.

Tchaikovsky writes for, and demands, a truly virtuoso ensemble. The expression is heightened in intensity, so there is nowhere to hide. His counterpoint is surprisingly intricate, so technique must be spot-on. And throughout all of his works, the composer, like the audience, requires a consistently beautiful sound.

Music director Enrique Arturo Diemecke understands all that, and fortunately our local band is more than up to the various tasks at hand. From the opening of "Francesca da Rimini" to the closing bars of the Symphony No. 2, the LBSO winds and brass created some amazing tonal colors, the strings were really magnificent and the percussion did their usual exemplary (and underappreciated) work.

Diemecke's ability to achieve perfect balance and transparent textures was everywhere in evidence. Striking solo contributions came from Gary Bovyer (clarinet, inexplicably denied a solo bow for "Francesca"), English horn Joan Elardo, flute Heather Clark and horn Joseph Meyer. The entire evening was a display of orchestral playing at its best.

Speaking of soloists, LBSO concertmaster Roger Wilkie played the violin concerto between the tone poem and the symphony, and demonstrated once again why we are so lucky to have him. His sound was huge, filling the cavernous auditorium with ease, and gorgeous. The concerto's well-known technical challenges seemingly presented no challenge at all, and the entire performance was simply wonderful, the equal of many with more celebrated names. Meanwhile, Agnes Gottschewski filled in capably as the violins' leader.

I'm reduced to criticizing Tchaikovsky, since the poor man isn't around to defend himself. "Francesca da Rimini" is very long, and I had trouble hearing any memorable tunes, which made it seem even longer. The piece is certainly dramatic enough, especially in its depiction of the whirlwind that traps the unfortunate lovers in Dante's story, but I suspect most of the audience would rather have been listening to "Romeo and Juliet," which has lots of great tunes and is shorter.

And it's easy to see why No. 2 isn't as well known as the last three symphonies. It begins well enough, with a nicely constructed first movement, but then we get this inane little march, an undistinguished scherzo, and a finale that degenerates towards the end into noisy, over-the-top bombast. For some reason, the finale's momentum is halted in mid-onrush by a gong. A gong? Where the heck did that come from?

Diemecke conducted, and the orchestra played, as if everything was a masterpiece. Indeed, Tchaikovsky was a great composer, even if, except for the violin concerto, these works are not his greatest, and the LBSO continues to demonstrate its development as a great orchestra. Enrique Arturo Diemecke is a great conductor and orchestra builder. Isn't that great?