Concert review: RPO sparkles with guest conductor
Ever since substituting for Yoav Talmi last spring, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra has been taken under Norwegian conductor Arild Remmereit’s spell, a freelancing guest conductor known for final-hour rescues for ill conductors.
Remmereit’s performance with the RPO last season was electrically charged, similar to pick-up chamber music where first-time combinations of musicians just click and sparks fly.
When the RPO announced Christopher Seaman’s upcoming departure from the orchestra last month, Remmereit’s name became transfixed in my mind.
Surely, the orchestra feels the same way if Thursday night’s concert — Remmereit’s second appearance with the orchestra — was any indication.
Remmereit is tall and slim, and has golden, floppy hair that nods with his head and swings it to each side — all with the beat. And his hands shiver with detail, pulling out all of the witty statements in Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 as if they were appearing out of a magician’s hat. His baton circled, zigzagged and punctured the orchestra like a sword during each of the night’s peaking exaltations.
Compared to the eccentric performances of the young Gustavo Dudamel (the Venezuelan conductor now with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra), Remmereit is slightly more genteel. To the dominating performances of the Russian statesman Valery Gergiev, Remmereit can be more jocular.
Adding to the night’s potential was a Van Cliburn award-winning pianist, the 19-year-old Chinese musician Haochen Zhang. He opened up Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 majestically, performing the monstrous opening chords with such force that he nearly unseated his small body from the piano bench.
He slipped on a few notes, but no matter; the young man pulled out an astonishingly graceful performance all around, despite the work’s innate showpiece qualities. Standing ovations and two encores followed before the audience would let him off stage.
Sparkle, a jazzy work composed by Eastman School of Music graduate Shafer Mahoney, opened the concert with a snapshot of the Empire State Building in New York City’s morning rush, the pulse of the city provided by a conglomerate of percussion instruments including bongos, castanets and sandpaper blocks. Remmereit was the crank that kept the work’s motors plowing forward.
The orchestra gave Remmereit all it could muster.
There’s no word whether Remmereit is looking for a full-time gig or whether he would even consider Rochester, but as one of the most dynamic conductors to come around without a home orchestra, he’s definitely on my short list.
AREGUERO@DemocratandChronicle.com
If you go
What: Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, with Van Cliburn winner Haochen Zhang.
When: <90,-10>8 p.m. Saturday.
Where: Eastman Theatre, 60 Gibbs St.
Cost: $20 to $75.
For information: (585) 454-2100 or www.rpo.org.
