Feb. 4th concert review

RIDGEFIELD SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA – Saturday, February 4, 2012

Reviewed by Courtenay Caublé, The Ridgefield Press

A packed house and nearly unprecedented audience enthusiasm at the Ridgefield Symphony’s Rogers and Hammerstein celebration last Saturday evening at the Anne Richardson auditorium were impressive testimony to the drawing power for Ridgefield audiences of Broadway musical favorites. The attraction is more than doubled, of course, when the favorites are showcased with the sort of pizzazz that enlivened the RSO’s fourth concert this season.

With multi-talented Maestro Gerald Steichen on the podium, the program offered orchestral selections (The Carousel Waltz as an opener and a Rogers and Hammerstein Interlude-Overture to start the second half) and vocal solos and duets from The King and I, Carousel, Oklahoma!, South Pacific, and The Sound of Music by the evening’s guest stars, Nat Chandler (familiar from a similar RSO program last season) and Teri Hansen, both of them dramatic vocalists with rich Broadway experience.

Chandler and Hansen were engaging both vocally and dramatically in an overall performance enhanced by what amounted to professional choreography. Ms. Hansen was charming and lively, first in a beautiful form-clinging, sparkling silver gown and later in an equally lovely but less formal dark blue outfit, and Mr. Chandler was top flight in every way – engagingly charismatic, with a rich vocal quality, expressive and flexible delivery, and star-quality dramatic control.

Never flagging in audience appeal, the program moved right along from one musical highlight to another towards a memorable conclusion, with both singers bringing their audience in with participatory involvement for “Do-Re-Mi” from The Sound of Music and the title song from Oklahoma!

It was the kind of musical presentation that surely must have left its audience remembering and humming familiar tunes and smiling (even the day after) and looking forward to more musical evenings like it in future RSO seasons.

Concert Review - "Violinist Avila propels RSO season opener"

Jan Stribula, Contributing Writer

Published 08:15 p.m., Tuesday, October 4, 2011

I'm not sure what Beethoven had in mind when he wrote his one and only violin concerto, but does anyone really know? I think he set the world's record for the longest delay in game, as the orchestra played both primary themes before the soloist finally started. But violinist Jorge Avila proved that good things are worth waiting for.

The Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra opened its 47th season last Saturday night at Ridgefield High School with an all-out all Beethoven program, with overall good results. But without a doubt, Avila's virtuosity in the Violin Concerto was the high point.

Avila has been the RSO concertmaster for the last three years, so he did have a slight home advantage playing the demanding piece. He maintained marvelous control of modulation, comfortably blending in with the orchestra. But Avila propelled himself into the stratosphere, surging ahead of the orchestra, shining on his own in his brilliant cadenzas.

It's not very often someone gets a standing ovation in the middle of a piece, but that's how Avila ended the first movement. He gave his violin quite a workout, and thank goodness he didn't break a string. After trading jabs with the orchestra for the rest of the concerto, especially the bassoon, Avila shared his bouquet of roses with the principals following their rollicking finale.

Gerald Steichen is heading into his fourth year as music director and conductor of a revitalized RSO, and promises to continue with a season full of musical treasures. If you get there early, you can hear Steichen give an entertaining and informative lecture before the concert.

We learned a little Greek mythology as Steichen explained the legend behind the opening work, the Overture to "The Creatures of Prometheus." Theatrically bright and bold, this was the perfect curtain riser, and I recognized a theme that Beethoven worked into the last movement of his Eroica Symphony.

Following intermission, we were treated to perhaps the most popular classical work ever written, Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67. Although it is commendable that RSO sustained supersonic speed without incident throughout the first movement, I prefer to enjoy listening to some of the notes a little longer. Fortunately, cellos succeeded in settling everyone down in the andante con moto second movement.

Horns, low strings, winds, and in turn all instruments reprised the opening "fate knocking at the door" motif. In the last movement, trombones and piccolo were added into the mix. Steichen kept the tempo under control as they charged out the powerfully syncopated finale.

Steichen and RSO have lined up a season full of events that will appeal to music lovers of all ages. Check their website at www.ridgefieldsymphony.org or call 203-438-3889 for more information.

Concert Review - "The Beauty of Beethoven"

RIDGEFIELD SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA – Saturday, October 1, 2011

Reviewed by Courtenay Caublé

Violinist Jorge Ávila’s sensitive performance of Beethoven’s D Major Violin Concerto was the highlight of the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra’s uniformly fine season opener last Saturday evening at Ridgefield High School’s Anne S. Richardson Auditorium. Maestro Gerald Steichen’s program, billed as “The Beauty of Beethoven,” also included that composer’s “Creatures of Prometheus” Overture and his Symphony No. 5 in C minor.

With the orchestra responding to his leadership with arguably the evening’s best orchestral playing, Maestro Steichen both expertly unified the overture’s shifting moods and revealingly delineated the subtleties of Beethoven’s orchestration through informed attention to both phrasing and dynamic movement and contrasts. The concluding work, the ever-popular Fifth Symphony, also profited from similar attention to interpretive detail -- as well as to fine orchestral playing generally -- in a well turned out and powerful overall performance.

Although Beethoven’s violin concerto affords ample opportunities for a soloist to display his or her technique, it is, in contrast to essentially virtuoso display pieces like the concertos of Vieuxtemps and Paganini, largely a lyric work, devoid even of the complex and dramatic harmonic treatment common in most of Beethoven’s other mature works. Its performance impact depends largely on a soloist’s ability and willingness to concentrate on the inherent beauty of the work’s lyric lines without intruding upon their essentially expressive simplicity.

Jorge Ávila, who is also the RSO’s regular Concertmaster, managed to do that, at least in part leaving the two main cadenzas and the concerto’s exciting final measures to bear testimony to his virtuosity per se. Throughout the whole concerto, but especially in the hymn-like slow movement, his articulation and phrasing were both well defined and sensitively appropriate, thereby enhancing (and never distorting) the implicit expressiveness of Beethoven’s straightforward lyricism.

The rest of Saturday evening’s audience must have agreed with me that Mr. Ávila’s performance was both technically impressive and musically satisfying, giving him a long and loud standing ovation. And the exuberant Mr. Ávila was obviously pleased about it too, passing out individual blossoms of the roses Maestro Steichen had handed him to key members of the orchestra and happily tossing another blossom out into the applauding audience.

The whole evening was a very auspicious beginning for the RSO’s 2011-2012 season.

Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra takes a trip to Paris

Jan Stribula, Contributing Writer, Danbury News-Times

Published 11:55 p.m., Wednesday, April 6, 2011

In the final concert of their third season together, maestro Gerald Steichen and the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra spent the first weekend of April in Paris. Eight stunning photographs wrapping around the stage made Ridgefield High School feel like a boat ride along the Seine. Little French flags were given out to all attendees, but regrettably, Bordeaux was not permitted on school property. Some of the music, however, was intoxicating.

Jubilant horns opened the "Rob Roy Overture" by Hector Berlioz, based on Sir Walter Scott's poem honoring a hero or outlaw, depending on your point of view. Heavenly harp passages seemed to suggest where the anti-hero wound up after the war. Playing in the high range, the English horn replicated bagpipes, as the RSO marched around in Scottish snap rhythm.

Seventeen-year-old Georges Bizet composed his Symphony No. 1 in C Major in about a month as a homework assignment for his teacher at the Paris Conservatory, Charles Gounod. After waiting 80 years to be premiered, it remains popular. Strings were in fine form leading the way throughout, with a lovely oboe theme in the adagio. Sharp brass in the final movement gave a few hints of Carmen.

Following intermission, the orchestra did a muscle flex for "Bacchanale" from "Samson et Dalila" by Camille Saint-Saens. Exotic winds created a seductive mood for duplicitous Dalila as dancing Philistines swirled around, and Samson was about to bring down the house. Tension coiled like a snake charmer with thunderous percussion, low brass and cellos vibrating with harmonic resonance. There's no substitute for hearing a live performance of this powerful piece.

"Dance of the Blessed Spirits," from "Orfeo ed Euridice," by Christoph Willibald Gluck, told a different kind of love story. The flute solo with muted strings was full of innocence and pathos in the interlude.

"Masques et bergamasques, Op. 112" by Gabriel Faure, had hints of modern sounds as music was making a transition out of the classical era. With nontraditional harmonies, Faure helped set the scene for the shift into experimental modes at the turn of the century. Melodies gently unfolded with descending chromatic scales in the ethereal "Pastorale."

The program closed with "La Valse," composed in 1920 as Maurice Ravel was re-examining Europe after the war. A second harp and triple wind section helped magnify the orchestra in the nightmarish off-balanced waltz. Steichen's exaggerated choreographic direction was dizzying. I felt like I was following someone trying to balance a tray of overflowing champagne flutes, while navigating across a ballroom on an ocean liner heaving in a storm. A wave of vertigo kicked in as I stared up at the photo of the Eiffel Tower on center stage. Steichen has certainly energized the RSO in his three years at the helm.

"April in Paris" concert review

RIDGEFIELD SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA – Saturday, April 2, 2011

Reviewed by Courtenay Caublé, Ridgefield Press

         With colorful photos of familiar Paris landmarks provided and displayed across the back of the stage on sound baffles with the support of the Leir Foundation and the Ridgefield Guild of Artists, the Ridgefield Symphony’s final 2010-11 subscription program last Saturday evening at the Anne S. Richardson Auditorium was both a visual and a sonic winner. Maestro Gerald Steichen’s all-French program, dubbed “April in Paris,” included Hector Berlioz’s Rob Roy Overture, Bizet’s Symphony No. 1 in C, the Bacchanale from Samson and Delilah by Saint-Saëns, Gluck’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Orfeo ed Euridice, Gabriel Fauré’s Masques et bergamasques, and Ravel’s La Valse.

        Both Maestro Steichen’s sensitive interpretations and control and the orchestra’s response to his direction were arguably the best ever, leaving no doubt about this fine ensemble’s “fully professional” status. Subtle responses to contrasting moods and dynamic shadings provided musical depth to both the Berlioz overture, with especially fine brass section and solo English horn playing, and the Bizet Symphony, with precise and expressive playing by the string sections and beautifully phrased and nuanced solos by principal oboist Dorothy Darlington, particularly in the lovely second movement Adagio.

        Three Western Connecticut Youth Orchestra members – Alicia LoCicero (viola), Marcus Hausler (cello), and Joseph Hawker (tuba) -- joined the RSO for a brilliant performance of Saint-Saëns’ percussion-driven Bacchanale, a richly orchestrated mélange of orientalism, lively and ultimately frenetic dance music, and broad lyricism. It was masterfully interpreted and performed throughout, from its sensuously evocative opening oboe cadenza onward, with outstanding percussion playing and an impressively managed buildup to the work’s deliberately orgiastic conclusion.

        The quietly lyrical Dance of the Blessed Spirits, enhanced by flutist Kerry Walker’s expressive playing, and Fauré’s incidental music for the 1919 dramatic presentation Masques et bergamasques were both beautifully managed, and Maestro Steichen and the orchestra were at their best throughout in the orchestral fireworks of Ravel’s La Valse – a rousing conclusion for both the concert and the current subscription series. Both the evening’s musical menu and the orchestra’s splendid performance were impressive and enjoyable enough to whet one’s expectations for next season’s offerings.