Napanews.com | Friday, August 16, 2002
Russian National Orchestra wows Napa celebrity-studded audience
By LOUISA HUFSTADER
Register Staff Writer
Twenty minutes before their concert time Wednesday night, members of the Russian National Orchestra seemed to be everywhere on the downtown Napa campus of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church.
In white tie and tails, they sat or stood in groups outside the church and its nearby school, smoking and chatting. Some, instruments in hand, watched intently as colleagues played a fast-paced series of chess games on a battered travel board, a chess clock timing their moves.
The members of this orchestra clearly know how to make themselves at home wherever they go, and the concert in St. John the Baptist's sanctuary was resounding proof. Under the baton of associate conductor Carlo Ponti, Jr., they delivered an evening of Russian and American classics that brought the star-studded audience to its feet again and again.
The sounding brass of Tchaikovsky's "Capriccio Italien" opened the concert, mercifully obliterating the digital whine of "Fur Elise" from some oblivious patron's cellular phone.
Written in early 1880 during a trip to Rome, the "Capriccio" is Tchaikovsky's musical diary of the city's pre-Lenten Carnival celebration. The composer called it "an Italian fantasia on folk tunes ... some of which I have assembled from anthologies, and some of which I have heard in the streets with my own ears."
Ponti and the Russian National brought Tchaikovsky's Italian dances, including a bolero and a tarantella, to life again with sprightly strings, dashing percussion and heraldic brass.
Brass again took the fore in what may have been the most unusual arrangement of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" ever heard in Napa. The 1924 piece is one of America's best-known and most beloved, from the very first notes of the clarinet glissando that begins it.
Or usually begins it. On Wednesday night, Napans heard a warhorse of a different color: In Russian trumpeter and composer Tomofei Dokshitzer's arrangement, "Rhapsody" begins with the blue sound of brass instead. Vlad Lavrik, the orchestra's young Ukrainian principal trumpeter, was the soloist; the percussion section also had much to do.
After a moment of shock, the audience embraced this decidedly Russian arrangement of the American classic. Lavrik's triumphant final notes drew a deserved ovation. At intermission, Napa Valley Symphony director Asher Raboy pronounced the rendition "great fun."
As audience members refreshed themselves, the musicians' chess series resumed in a remote pew while, in the second row, Italian actress Sophia Loren greeted well-wishers and signed autographs. Loren, the mother of maestro Ponti, was one of several celebrities at the concert, along with event co-sponsors Margrit and Robert Mondavi; stargazers also spotted Gordon Getty, Robert Redford and Bonnie Raitt.
The concert's second half featured Mussorgsky's 1874 cycle "Pictures at an Exhibition," in its 1922 orchestration by Maurice Ravel. The Franco-Russian extravaganza led the audience through a series of contrasting scenes, from the stately and mysterious "The Old Castle" to the pizzicato scampering of "Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks."
Somber brass introduced the "Catacombs: Roman Sepulchre," section, and Ponti unleashed the orchestra at its most sumptuous for the majestic finale, "The Great Gate of Kiev."
As the audience, on its feet again, clapped and cheered tirelessly, Ponti returned to lead the orchestra in a double-barreled encore of the overtures to Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" and Glinka's "Russlan and Ludmilla."
The sound quality of the performance was as rich and vibrant as the music itself. An unusual concert venue with in-the-round pew seating, a vaulted ceiling and no hard angles, St. John's sanctuary is an acoustically beautiful space. The Russian National Orchestra took the time, in an afternoon rehearsal, to tune itself to the room, and the effort paid off handsomely with a warm, balanced concert sound.
St. John's seats 1,000, but only about 600 ticket-holders turned out for the evening, which was presented by the Napa Valley Symphony. If the Russian National Orchestra rolls through town on its Western tour next year, there should be no empty seats.