Orchestra rides guest soloist to thrilling high

By Joe Brown

Monday, Sept. 14, 2009 | 2 a.m.

If he could go back in time, I wonder if Las Vegas Philharmonic conductor David Itkin might rejigger the order of the three pieces he planned for the orchestra at Saturday night’s season-opening performance.

After beginning with a solemnly stirring reading of Sibelius’ hymnlike “Finlandia,” the Philharmonic played Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D, Op. 35, with young violinist Giora Schmidt executing the legendarily challenging solos with virtuosic command and musicality.

The audience members at UNLV’s Ham Hall couldn’t get enough of the guest soloist, leaping to their feet in the pause between the first and second movements (I was one of them), and rewarding his exhilarating efforts with a sustained ovation at the finale, bringing him back for three bows.

Schmidt returned the appreciation with an unplanned solo encore, the first movement prelude of Bach’s E Major Partita, a lovely lagniappe the Philharmonic’s musicians seemed to enjoy as much as the audience.

After the intermission, the Tchaikovsky was followed by a dynamic and finely detailed performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, Op. 92.

But Schmidt’s intense, impassioned feat of artistry — and athleticism — was a tough act to follow, and even Beethoven felt a bit anticlimactic coming after it.

This is season No. 11 for the Philharmonic, and our instrumental institution set a new standard for itself with assured, expressive playing in this program of three sturdy 19th-century European masterworks. Clearly, careful attention had been paid before the concert to balancing the sound for Ham Hall, delivering all the warmth and brightness conjured by the musicians.

As the Philharmonic began the Tchaikovsky, Schmidt bounced and rocked a bit, as if readying himself for a boxing match or relay race (which this violin concerto might be said to resemble). He stood at the center of the orchestra, not 3 feet from conductor Itkin, and the two frequently maintained eye contact, swaying forward and back in a sort of dance. I’ve never seen a soloist and conductor work in such intimate communion.

The audience was held in rapt, seemingly breath-holding silence as Schmidt conquered each technically challenging solo passage, producing the multiple stops and unimaginably high — and then higher — notes with icy clarity.

“Does that mean I can go now?” Schmidt joked to the audience after the spontaneous ovation between movements. The Philharmonic’s string section supported the soloist with soulfulness and delicacy — when the orchestra took over after one solo passage, Schmidt endearingly encouraged first chair violinist DeAnne Letourneau with a little fist pump.

Itkin introduced Beethoven’s Seventh by waxing about its “luscious” melodies and “just enough classical restraint for Beethoven to maintain his self-respect.”

The Philharmonic’s horns and woodwinds sounded particularly full and, well, Germanic, and the strings and basses thrillingly volleyed the sound back and forth across the stage in the race-for-the-finish surge of the fourth movement.

Tchaikovsky may have received the evening’s loudest applause, but Beethoven ultimately won the evening for this listener — the stately cadences of his symphony’s second movement were unshakable, and I hummed it all the way home.