Guest Cellist, 18, Wows CSO Crowd

(first published in The Cincinnati Post Jan. 20, 2001)

Cincinnati Symphony music director Jesús López-Cobos got his wish Friday night at Music Hall. No one applauded.

After the third movement of Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, that is. The hyper-charged march movement typically inspires clapping, but López-Cobos forestalled it - as he genially put it in remarks to the audience - "before it's too late." It made for a wonderful moment, as the rousing Allegro yielded with scarcely a pause to the plangent strings of the finale.

The concert was a preview of the one López-Cobos and the CSO will perform Monday evening in New York's Carnegie Hall and beginning Jan. 29, on a two-week tour of Europe.

Guest artist in Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1 was the phenomenal young cellist Han-Na Chang. Just 18, the Korean-born high school senior from New York stunned her listeners with the sheer power of her playing. Muscular technique aside, she probed the very soul of the work. The severe mood of the opening Allegretto, a kind relentless chase organized around a four-note motif, came through in harsh, biting tones. The middle movement waxed softer, even spooky in an extended passage of fingered harmonics. The brooding cadenza, a movement unto itself, featured vacant, desolate pizzicati, before being caught up in the whirlwind finale. Ms. Chang caught her listeners by surprise here, jumping from her chair at the conclusion as López-Cobos swung to the side to signal the end.

Conducting from memory, López-Cobos pumped emotion and romantic color into the Tchaikovsky. Memorable moments included the feather-soft introduction of the "big" theme in the first movement, the gracious 5/4 "waltz" (practically danceable), the volleys of strings and crackling brass in the march and the throat-catching refrain of the finale.

The concert opened with a crack performance of Barber's snappy, tuneful Overture to "The School for Scandal." Repeat is 8 tonight at Music Hall.