Soloist Use Violins To Tell Their Stories Cerovek And Ferris Added Color And Imagery To Symphonic Notes

Spokane Symphony Orchestra Friday, March 3, the Opera House

Great instrumentalists are either actors or storytellers. The “actors” supply such bodily commentary as “oh, see how gorgeous this tune is” or “look how difficult this passage is.” The “storytellers” can make passages sing or cavort without the use of much body movement.

Corey Cerovsek, violin soloist Friday with the Spokane Symphony, is a storyteller. He played with an almost unnerving nonchalance. Mind you, his playing of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto was not indifferent, for his performance was deeply committed - Cerovsek brought the intensity of a great singer to those soulful melodies so plentiful in Barber. And he delivered the scampering perpetual motion of the finale with hair-raising verve.

For an encore Cerovsek ripped into Fritz Kreisler’s the “Recitative and Scherzo” with such vigor that when he finished, a tangle of broken hairs was hanging from his bow.

Cerovsek also did something quite unorthodox at Friday’s performance. He substituted an 18th-century G.B. Guadanini violin for his own 1908 Stefano Scarampella - the instrument Cerovsek used in rehearsals with the orchestra and at the symphony’s performance Thursday in Coeur d’Alene. Switching fiddles is a risky business. If the experiment is a success, it’s daring. If it is a failure, it’s foolhardy.

Cerovsek’s venture was successful. True, there were a few nervous moments in Barber’s second movement when he had not completely discovered the Guadanini’s “voice,” times when finger placement was a fraction off, or when a bit too much bow pressure made low notes sound gravelly. But the concerto and the encore were exciting playing from a splendid player.

Violinist Kelly Farris, the Spokane Symphony concertmaster, played the seductive storyteller in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite “Scheherazade,” beautifully shaping the work’s elaborate violin solos. “Scheherazade,” inspired by the stories from the “Arabian Nights,” has become such a popular orchestral showpiece that a listener can easily forget it is a work of extraordinary genius. Few composers of any period in music wrote with RimskyKorsakov’s distinctive gift for vivid orchestral colors, summoning the sounds of a storm at sea and a romantic caress with equal ease.

Fabio Mechetti made “Scheherazade” more than a showpiece. He crafted Rimsky-Korsakov’s colorful symphonic narrative into a compelling adventure. The orchestral playing conveyed the tenderness and boldness of the work’s four tales. Except for some passing slips, the symphony’s soloists were wonderfully evocative of the exotic atmosphere of this work. There was especially fine work from cellist John Marshall, oboist Keith Thomas and flutist Bruce Bodden.

The concert opener was Christopher Rouse’s “Infernal Machine,” a lighthearted, fiveminute piece of pleasing orchestral devilry. Rouse’s machine chuffs along like a slightly ominous whirligig, with the orchestra clicking, whistling and sputtering, occasionally emitting dragon-like groans and yawns. It ends with a clang of percussion, but not before Rouse has slyly quoted Beethoven in a fleeting aside. Don’t be fooled, Rouse is a serious composer of symphonies, concertos and chamber music, but in “The Infernal Machine,” he plays the orchestral humorist.

MEMO: A sidebar appeared with this story under the headline: Highlight The mounting excitement Mechetti brought to Rimsky-Korsakov’s exotic warhorse, “Scheherazade.”