Word: soloist
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Even on a rainy Friday afternoon, the Box Office lines at Symphony Hall stretched long with people eager to hear the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its guest soloist, piano virtuoso Murray Perahia. Despite these trying circumstances, the excellent concert made the trip to the BSO well-worth its efforts...
...first movement has an unusual, slightly ear-jarring opening, and quickly develops all its themes at once. The orchestra sometimes seemed to overpower the soloist, but the fault may have been with the piano itself, which had a muddy quality that was not conducive to fortissimo passages or soaring clarity of sound. Perahia performed his own cadenza, which displayed a wonderful range of emotions and beautiful nuances...
...soloist of a concerto, the string quartet is a curious innovation, placing an entire choir of instruments against the orchestra. This form poses some practical problems: the challenge is making the soloists truly stand apart from the orchestral strings. The concerto traditionally accomplishes this in three ways: alternation of solo and orchestral passages; dynamic, registral, and rhythmic isolation; and use of the instrument's individual tone color. This last method, in the case of the string quartet, is the hardest: the quartet's tone color is easily blanketed by the larger orchestral strings. The genre of concerto depends upon contrast...
Reagan Messer, as Tybalt, skillfully portrays the dark vengefulness of the character through sharp jumps and cold, forbidding demeanour. A frigid, severe expression and haughtily up-tilted nose make soloist Nadia Thompson a perfect Lady Capulet, though there is no conceivable reason why her character should be on pointe. Oddly enough, Pelzig throws in a hint of incest between Tybalt and Lady Capulet--maybe it's just the acting, but they certainly seem a little too uncomfortably close throughout the ballet...
Though far from a world-class soloist, Rieu is a perfectly respectable violinist and conductor, and he has a knack for picking danceworthy tempos. His slickly polished albums may not be especially demanding, but they aren't gimmicky either; he doesn't play reggae versions of Tales from the Vienna Woods or pose in a G-string for publicity shots. All he does is look handsome and make music--a concept as old-fashioned as the music he makes. Therein, in fact, may lie the real secret of his success: the perpetually hummable tunes of the 19th century waltz king...