Valentina Peleggi conducting
with Daniel Dastoor, Annelle Gregory, William Hagen, Qing Li, Emma Meinreken, Julian Rhee, Adé Williams & Daisuke Yamamoto, violins
Sept. 13, Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center
The Richmond Symphony is launching its 2024-25 season with Strad Fest, a showcase of violins crafted in the early 18th century by Antonio Stradivari.
Nine of these classic instruments, drawn from the collections of foundations and dealers, that over the centuries have belonged to figures ranging from Jan Kubelik, Yehudi Menuhin and Itzhak Perlman to British noblemen and the brother of US President William Howard Taft, are being featured in a full weekend of performances.
Eight of the Strads sounded off in an opening-night program of Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” and that work’s most popular modern counterpart, the Argentinian tango master Astor Piazzolla’s “The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires,” each season played in turn by Daisuke Yamamoto, the symphony’s concertmaster, and an international cast of seven young violinists.
Valentina Peleggi, the orchestra’s music director, sequenced the sets hemispherically, pairing the northern season with the one that would be in progress south of the Equator – Vivaldi’s spring paired with Piazzolla’s autumn, and so on through the year. That made for a whiplashy listening experience, swinging between Vivaldi’s Italian baroque style and Piazzolla’s melange of his native tango and European modernism.
Following these sonic seasonal evocations, and who was evoking them, was a challenge. The program book listed the two sets separately, with their Italian and Spanish titles, and the soloists in each piece were identified only in brief, sometimes first-name-only stage introductions.
Who played what and in what order? Yamamoto played Vivaldi’s “Spring” Concerto. As for the other seven soloists and each one’s showcase, my notes hastily scribbled in the dark are too close to guesses to be published. (The performers are listed for each selection in their Sept. 14 chamber program.)
The violinists generally coaxed fine tones, bright colors and vivid sound effects from their instruments. Several sounded as if they were still feeling their way around the sonic and expressive capacities of the fiddles. Understandable: It takes musicians some time to get all they can out of any instrument, let alone a Strad.
Peleggi and a chamber-orchestra contingent of symphony players played the Vivaldi with warmth and sharp focus when needed (in the summer storm, for example), and with a perhaps surprising degree of heft, considering their numbers, in Piazzolla’s more earthy and turbulent score. Cellist Neal Cary and violist Hyo Joo Uh partnered soloists ably.
The Richmond Symphony’s Strad Fest continues at Dominion Energy Center, Sixth & Grace streets, with eight violinists playing chamber music, 1 p.m. Sept. 14 at Gottwald Playhouse (tickets: $200); violinist Itzhak Perlman joining the orchestra in “Cinema Serenade,” 5 p.m. Sept. 14, at Carpenter Theatre (tickets: $15-$69); and “An Afternoon with Itzhak Perlman,” a multimedia recital and talk, 3 p.m. Sept. 15 at Carpenter Theatre (tickets: $82-$180.) Details: (800) 514-3849 (ETIX); http://richmondsymphony.com