Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 23, 1994                   TAG: 9403230015
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Seth Williamson Correspondent
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SYMPHONY'S AT ITS FINEST, ESPECIALLY WITH BARTOK

In a program that featured two world premieres and a 20th-century classic by Bela Bartok, Victoria Bond and the RSO gave the Roanoke Civic Center crowd their best performance of the season. Their reading of Bartok's "Concerto for Orchestra," in fact, ranks as one of the most authentically powerful experiences this orchestra has created under Bond's baton.

After a few so-so performances and a practice schedule in which the customary Friday night rehearsal was eliminated, this concert could have been the perfect candidate for disaster. But something - two strong new pieces, a chance to play one of the greatest works of the century - roused the symphony musicians to their best.

It helped that neither of the night's new pieces was a Kleenex commission, that all-too-familiar species of work that is played once and never heard of again. It's easy to imagine both Lois Vierck's "Devil's Punchbowl" and Joe Kennedy Jr.'s "Sketches for Solo Violin, Jazz Trio and Orchestra" getting further performances by other orchestras.

Of the five Vierck pieces I have heard, "Devil's Punchbowl" is the most interesting and accessible. Inspired by a rugged canyon in the southern California desert, the piece began with falling glissandi on the trombones, a Vierck trademark. The glissandi continued in the strings with muted trumpets as mildly dissonant tone clusters were uttered by various orchestral sections.

Short phrases migrated from section to section and coalesced into larger melodic fragments, and high strings and cymbals evoked the shimmering desert atmosphere. The piece crescendoed with strange hieratic trumpet calls, gradually became more frenetic until the it reached a pounding climax. In a brief coda the tension vanished as quickly as a desert thunderstorm and the work ended on a cathartic major chord.

The "Sketches for Solo Violin, Jazz Trio and Orchestra" was less adventurous but easily was the audience's favorite. A four-movement concerto for violin and jazz piano trio, the piece showcased not only Joe Kennedy Jr.'s beautiful jazz fiddle playing, but his orchestration skills as well. Kennedy's orchestral writing is reminiscent alternately of Copland, Leroy Anderson and Morton Gould, and he wrote lots of good solos for trombonist Dayl Burnett and trumpeter Allen Bachelder. The showpiece earned bravos and a standing ovation.

The real tour-de-force Monday night, however, was Bela Bartok's "Concerto for Orchestra." An incomparable symphonic masterpiece, the work is tremendously difficult and has defeated orchestras better known than the RSO. But the combination of Bond's shaping musical intelligence and an inspired performance from her players made this a memorable musical event.

In particular there was beautiful string work during this concerto. Bartok wrote many powerful tuttis as the concertino part of the work migrated from section to section, and the orchestra's string players produced a string sound with a deep, satiny finish.

It was all there in this performance: the barbaric pounding rhythms of the first movement, the ironic humor of the second and fourth movements, the tragic emotion of the middle movement, and the fleet perpetual motion of the finale. It added up to one of the finest RSO performances in years, even though the applause was not, I thought, commensurate with the achievement.