Guest pianist Henry Wong Doe, winner of "Audience Favourite" prizes at both the Rubinstein and Busconi International Piano Competitions, is undoubtedly the veteran of numerous concerts with orchestras and settings of considerably grander design. Buckley Recital Hall, on Friday night, was in contrast largely peopled by undergraduates and silver-headed patrons in town for Homecoming Weekend. Yet one could hardly have been capable of discerning a difference in his professional attitude.
Wong Doe's engrossed rendition of the piano for the centerpiece, Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, made for awed viewing and listening. To begin with, the concerto by no means presents a straightforward interpretation-the first movement is described by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's program annotator Phillip Huscher as "large, finely detailed ... filled with characteristic Tchaikovskian touches like the barrages of quadruple octaves in the piano solo." Nonetheless, Wong Doe was technically precise whilst infusing his solo with a distinctive liveliness. At times sublime with the keys, he brought an appreciative audience to its feet as the concerto closed.
The Orchestra, on the other hand, suffered several hiccups with coordination. These, while failing to mar the performance's elegance, were perhaps characteristic of early-season adjustments to accommodate newcomers. The Orchestra smoothed through the opening piece, "Procession of the Nobles," extracted from the opera-ballet "Mlada," with appropriate attention to its rousing marches and general pomp. Tchaikovsky, though, posed altogether quite a different challenge. Transitions from piano to string and from movement to movement were occasionally disjointed; one of the second violins was guilty of jumping a cue. Interestingly, there appeared to be breaks between movements-somewhat unusual for this piece, ultimately refreshing-which aspired to define their respective themes.
By the allegro fuoco-the third movement in the concerto-the Orchestra found its footing. The sweeping finale, which included a Russian dance based on a Ukrainian melody, was executed with considerable relish and expertise. Particularly, the oboe solos by Tim Shapiro '07 were impressive due to their assured clarity.
The second half of the night was devoted to Symphony No. 5 in D minor by Dimitri Shostakovich, a composer who in the Stalin years was first a darling of the people, and later was condemned by the fickle Kremlin. Symphony No. 5 became his supplicating, secretly defiant, response to the powers that were. Richard Freed, in his program notes for the National Symphony, described its movement as wanting "an apotheosis or 'ceremonial triumph,' [but making] a statement of heroic resolve, expressed with searing intensity."
The shrill violins in this last allegro, rendered to a palpable vigor by the Orchestra, made for an emotional finale to the night. Patrons left with the Russian masterpieces swirling in their consciousness. "It was a selection really worth your time. Difficult as it is to pick a couple of definitive pieces from the large number of symphonies composed by Russian musicians, I think this evening did justice to them," said Angela Choe '08.
We wait expectantly, then, for the repeat of the night's elegance at the Orchestra's Family Weekend Concert, supplemented by the world premiere of Richard Beaudoin's "Three Dreams."