CIM
Orchestra shines at season opener
Thursday
September 18, 2008, 11:33 AM
REVIEW
CIM Orchestra
Every
September, an audience at Severance Hall meets the newest orchestra in
town. It is an ensemble comprising students from the Cleveland
Institute of Music, many of whom didn't know one another just weeks
before.
The
exhilarating thing about the CIM Orchestra on opening night is that it
often sounds like the players have been collaborating for eons. At
their first concert of the season Wednesday under Carl Topilow, the
musicians tackled challenging works by Dvorak, Rachmaninoff and
Strauss with plentiful polish and muscularity.
The
program was introduced by Joel Smirnoff, in his first year as
institute president. He seemed to float on air as he addressed the
packed house and the stageful of gifted instrumentalists.
How gifted? Topilow and the orchestra thrust
themselves into Dvorak's "Carnival" Overture even before
audience applause had died down, revealing how cohesive and alert the
ensemble has become in a very short time. This was a performance of
marvelous rhythmic buoyancy and tender appeal, with fine solo winds,
ebullient brasses and dreamy string playing.
The
atmosphere became even more intense when Alexander Ghindin, winner of
the 2007 Cleveland International Piano Competition, sat down at the
Steinway grand to play Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
There were moments when the orchestra took a distant place amid the
pianist's stentorian urgency, but his steely clarity lifted the score
to the heights (and, in the "Dies Irae" passages, the
depths).
Ghindin
easily negotiated the fleet acrobatics, and he made sure that the
diverse transformations of the theme had individual character. In the
work's most famous episode, that sweeping romantic melody almost
without equal, he chose a finely wrought, unsentimental approach.
The
orchestra didn't have optimum presence, but the relationship between
soloist and ensemble was always in sync. Ghindin returned to play a
bold account of Rachmaninoff's Prelude in G minor, Op. 23, No. 5.
Few
works test the mettle of orchestras more fiercely than Richard
Strauss' "Ein Heldenleben," the German composer's depiction
of a hero (aka himself) forging ahead in the face of opposing forces.
It's a sprawling score that Topilow led with spacious care and the
orchestra treated as the swashbuckling joy it can be when everyone's
on the same musical page.
The
various sections unfolded with sonic luxuriance and subtlety. The
brasses were gleaming and confident, the winds vibrant, the strings
ultra-sophisticated and the percussion precise (if perhaps too eager
at times). Oscar Soler Santos applied generous allure to the violin
solos (as the hero's persnickety wife) and entered into lovely duet
with hornist Lauren Moore at journey's end.
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