Preview: Alan Gilbert Conducts All-Britten Program
For JFK, From Ben

Greenwich Village Orchestra Features Itamar Zorman in Brahms Concerto

by Angela Sutton

Greenwich Village Orchestra, Feast of Music

The East Village got an earful of 2013 Avery Fisher Career Grant winner Itamar Zorman on Sunday, appearaning with the Greenwich Village Orchestra under the leadership of Barbara Yahr. Zorman performed the Brahms Violin Concerto on a program that also featured a work by his father, Moshe Zorman, and Tchiakovsky's famous Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture.

Zorman the elder's work, Galilean Suite, might be considered "music for an unfilmed movie," its steady evolution of Near Eastern thematic material in each of its three movements implying a succession of scenes. The GVO's warm sound suited the material well, setting up some of the striking moments such as the sudden eruption of the percussion battery in the piece's final section.

Romeo and Juliet followed, and while the outline of the work and many of the individual parts came across successfully, the orchestra's timing was disjointed. Although some of this was a consequence of the difficult sword-fight-scene sections, maestra Jahr introduced halts into the slower moments at either end of the work; meant to make the performance sound improvisatory, this approach only conveyed a sort of stutter.

Zorman, the younger, came out for the second half, displaying an absolute mastery of and love for the Brahms score—both were immediately apparent as soon as his bow hit the strings. The orchestra did solid work behind him, never topping the soloist. If anything, though, maestra Jahr could have loosened the leash in the tutti sections, which, especially in the first movement, roll out great waves of sound. Thankfully, this solicitiousness did leave plenty of room for Zorman's impeccable navigation of the concerto's knottier corners. Of particular note was his extended first-movement cadenza, which began modeled on Joachim's original, but spun out into more harmonically distant territory before an extended return.

Zorman sated the immense response from the audience with the contemplative "Adagio" from Bach's Sonata in C Major, providing a moment of stillness before sending us all out into the damp evening.

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