Perlman opens ESO season with vigor, skill and humor
The Elgin Symphony Orchestra's Gala Concert Saturday was fittingly book-ended by two excerpts from Wagner's Ring Cycle: "Entry of the 4Gods into Valhalla" and "Ride of the Valkyries."
The first piece accompanies the gods in "Das Rheingold" as they cross the Rhine River into their new home in Valhalla. The second, from "Die Walkure," comes as goddesses spirit the bravest slain warriors to become protectors of the immortals.
Itzhak Perlman, a living classical deity, came once more on Saturday to Elgin, one of many familiar places on the map of his adopted homeland. Saturday's concert, which marked the start of the ESO's 58th season, was Perlman's third visit and hopefully not the last.
Perlman's throne -- a padded chair elevated on a platform -- was waiting to receive him while the orchestra played the Wagner excerpt.
When Perlman walked out, it wasn't a hero's welcome but a welcome fitting for an old friend and partner.
The violinist drew a laugh from the audience with a quick, skeptical look at his 1714 Stradivarius that Concertmaster Isabella Lippi handed him.
Then started the reacquaintance of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra under Robert Hanson's sure baton and the otherworldly voice of Itzhak Perlman's violin.
Perlman was visibly swept up in the first-movement drama of Beethoven's D Major Concerto, nodding his head with verve as the orchestra echoed his theme.
Perlman's virtuosity was on display late in the first when he simultaneously developed the theme and climbed up and down the D major scale.
Swabbing his brow under the hot lights of the Hemmens Auditorium, Perlman got another rise out of the audience when he did a little dance to a cell phone ring between the first and second movements.
As Perlman lowered the voice of his instrument to an intimate whisper in the second movement, the orchestra followed suit, at times backing the violinist with no more than a spare pizzicato.
Before anyone had noticed, the soloist and orchestra had started into the catchy third movement. The orchestra seemed a bit heavy at times in the third, which calls for a light touch.
If Perlman's skill has been blunted in the almost 50 years since he was introduced to American audiences on "The Ed Sullivan Show," it didn't show Saturday night.
During a cadenza late in the third movement, Perlman shredded up the neck of his instrument like Eddie Van Halen in "Eruption."
The audience rewarded the 62-year-old master with a standing ovation. Perlman lifted himself to his feet to accept the applause and returned to acknowledge the still-applauding audience after a brief foray into the wings.
Perlman stuck around only for the concerto, meaning ESO patrons might have to wait a few years to see the world's preeminent violinist and one of Illinois' leading orchestras collaborate again.