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After the Ridgefield Symphony
Orchestra's final subscription concert this season last
Saturday night at the Anne Richardson Auditorium, suspense
and anticipation will run high until we learn which of the
four "Fabulous Finalists" vying for the currently vacant
position of Music Director will be on the podium in seasons
to come. With Christopher Confessore, the fourth and final
candidate, in charge, and with pianist Andrew Armstrong as
guest soloist, the evening’s program included contemporary
American composer Michael Torke's An Italian Straw Hat
Ballet Suite, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 in C.
minor, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F minor.
Although a recent work, the Torke suite
is less musically avant-garde than similar in aural effect
to a popular theatrical score, with a pleasing variety of
moods and styles (including echoes of Rossini and American
jazz), captivating rhythms, and a very skillfully managed
orchestration. Maestro Confessore was impressively in
charge of the interpretation, energetically bringing out
individual colors and blending them with others, while both
visually and effectively shading phrases. The result was
crisp responses from his musicians and some of the
orchestra's best playing to date.
And with only the few minor slips here
and there that are inevitable in live music, the same fine
leadership and playing brought an appreciative audience to
its feet at the close of a splendid reading of the
Tchaikovsky symphony, with especially fine phrasing in the
introspective slow second movement, precision and varied
nuances in the third movement's spirited pizzicato,
and the final movement’s alternation of exciting onrush and
folk-music-like contrasting middle section.
But the program's high point was the
Beethoven concerto, with an extraordinary performance by
young pianist Andrew Armstrong, who has evolved into an
unequivocally first-rate artist. Relaxed and entirely at
home with his instrument, he demonstrated all the requisites
for both exciting and musically satisfying performance --
masterful technical dexterity, the sort of control that
extends from the most powerful utterance to the quietest
whisper, and (perhaps best of all) a lyric sense that can
make the piano (which is, after all, technically a
percussion instrument) sing like a violin or a cello. He is
also a fine ensemble performer who, in superb collaboration
with Maestro Confessore, was able to make everything
dovetail and combine in a finely woven musical fabric. It
was a memorable performance.
Whatever happens, we hope to hear more
from both Mr. Armstrong and Maestro Confessore.
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Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra
90 East Ridge, Ridgefield, CT 06877
Tel:(203) 438-3889 Fax:(203)438-0222
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