Violinist challenges
Honolulu Symphony’s
flexibility

Cho-Liang Lin with the Honolulu Symphony: Program repeats 7:30 p.m. today at Blaisdell Concert Hall. Tickets $15 to $55. Call 792-2000.

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Review by Ruth O. Bingham
Special to the Star-Bulletin

Post-Sept. 11: Everything has changed, but life goes on. The Honolulu Symphony carried on as usual, but opened its season Sunday with a patriotic sing-along of the national anthem and Hawai'i Pono'i, led by the newly affiliated Honolulu Symphony Choir, the former O'ahu Choral Society.

The concert's first half featured Cho-Liang Lin in Tchaikovsky's ever-popular Violin Concerto. Lin's meltingly tender opening set the tone for a thoughtful and sensitive performance that brought those incomparable Tchaikovsky melodies to life once again.

Before the concert, Maestro Samuel Wong noted: "How many times have we done the Tchaikovsky? And yet, each time it's new. ... What is unusual about tonight's performance is its flexibility." In other words, Lin played it with substantial rubato throughout, speeding up and slowing down at will, as if carrying on a conversation. His style made for compelling communication, even as it created struggles in ensemble with the orchestra that kept Wong on his toes.

Lin's performance was technically excellent and musically exciting. Despite his violin's smallish voice, Lin's tone was warm, his dynamic range wide, and his pianissimos exquisite. He even made the eminently forgettable second movement a song of beauty. Lin did not grandstand -- there was little of that charismatic fire that attracts fans -- but his music spoke more eloquently than actions.

The concert opened with Dan Welcher's Festive Overture Spumante, composed in 1997 as the season opener for the Boston Pops. Audiences may remember him from the early 1990s, when he was Honolulu Symphony's composer-in-residence and composed his first symphony and "Haleakala: How Mau'i Snared the Sun."

A light-hearted, immediately appealing work, Spumante suits its name, which means "bubbling" or "sparkling" (like the wine) in Italian. In his program notes, Welcher acknowledged the work's neo-classical roots in its concise, traditional form and in the way he used the orchestra, but more evident is its unapologetic emotionalism of the late 20th century's neo-Romanticism. Wong described Spumante as "like a film score." It is, but more importantly, it is a thoroughly delightful concert work.

The concert's main work, according to Wong, was Ravel's orchestral transcription of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." Ravel's genius showcased the power of the Romantic orchestra as an ensemble of choirs and soloists; Sunday's performance was a shining orchestral triumph tarnished by individual lapses.

For all the wonderful ensemble work by string and woodwind choirs -- the shimmering harmonics in the Promenade and the eerie string slide in "Baba Yaga" come to mind -- in "Mussorgsky's Pictures," it was the brass that stole the limelight, from their strong, rich choir in "Gnomus" to a hair-raising tutti in "Baba Yaga."

Many solos shone as well, most notably Todd Yukimoto on saxophone (yes, saxophone), Philip Gottling III on contrabassoon, all six percussionists and Susan McGinn on flute.

Unfortunately, glitches in brass solos plagued the performance: several by tubist Jerome Stover, including a painfully uncertain solo in "Bydlo," and by trumpeter Michael Zonshine, whose "incessant chattering" of Schmuyle slipped from chattering into dogma.

Perhaps season-opening jitters were to blame. Both Stover and Zonshine delivered stronger solos elsewhere; Zonshine in the Promenade, Stover against pizzicato strings in "Baba Yaga."

From the podium, Wong conjured images, lurching through the fitful "Gnomus," flitting on tiptoes through "Tuileries." With each picture, he transformed the orchestra, from the plodding juggernaut of a "Bydlo" to a shimmering Mendelssohnian ensemble in "Ballet of Unhatched Chicks."

It was quite a performance, leading to the grand Wong finale with a magnificent climax and a thunderous last chord that challenged the audience to match it in applause.

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