New Conductor Brings Vitality To Symphony

Spokane Symphony Friday, Oct. 24, Opera House

Jung-Ho Pak, the Spokane Symphony’s gifted associate conductor, brought an energetic physicality to the podium Friday - the first subscription concert Pak has led since he assumed the associate conductorship last season. The evening’s soloist, Aviram Reichert, demonstrated the kind of sensitive musicality one can usually only hope for in a pianist at the beginning of a solo career.

Reichert, the bronze medalist in the 1997 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition showed the very best qualities of a competition winner without the showy exhibitionism in his playing of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3. He was a good listener as well as an exceptional player - one who has cultivated a sparkling clean technique and a lustrous tone.

Where Reichert’s special musical intelligence showed best was in the slow middle movement of this concerto. His control gave a sense of infinite space and time, but his playing still had a firm sense of direction. Other details in this movement, such as the dialog of bassoon and flute floating over the piano passage work and the stern rhythmic motive of the cellos and basses, enhanced an exceptional performance.

In the concerto’s fast movements, Pak and the orchestra sometimes lagged behind the soloist. Taken as a whole, though, the concerto was beautifully expressive over wide range of moods. Reichert rewarded the audience’s enthusiasm with a jazzy solo encore.

In the orchestral works Friday, Pak’s leadership brought vitality to Dvorak’s “Carnival Overture” and to many of the pages of Brahms’ Symphony No. 2. There is plenty to admire in his work - energy and the ability to shape phrases, in particular. Pak conducted from memory in the Brahms symphony and rarely consulted the printed score in the Dvorak work. He knows his stuff.

What was missing was the precise authority that can make the final chord of the Adagio of the Brahms symphony appear with absolute unanimity out of nowhere. It sounded ragged Friday. There were too few times when the orchestra played as softly as Brahms so frequently demands; when it did, as at the end of the third movement, the effect was captivating. Often the music sounded harsh in loud passages because the soft passages had been overplayed.

Pak does not use a baton, thinking, probably, that his hands convey greater expressiveness without one; but that makes rhythmic accuracy difficult for the players. He uses large gestures to impart vitality in the music; but that makes playing softly a contradiction of those gestures.

But Pak is an intense, talented musician and a very smart fellow. He is only 36, and will undoubtedly solve the problems discussed above. Pak is certainly an asset to the orchestra and to the community, and his work arouses great expectations.

, DataTimes