Audience, CSO Players Welcome Laredo

   The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra needs a principal guest conductor, someone to help provide continuity when music director Paavo Järvi is not in town, and to bring his or her own focus to the orchestra. (The orchestra has been without one since Ivan Fischer left in 1995.)
   A splendid candidate stood before the CSO Friday night at Music Hall. He is one of the world's greatest musicians, is known and loved by the CSO players, had a good thing going for the CSO until budgetary woes intervened, and just took a job within commuting distance of Cincinnati (an endowed professorship at Indiana University in Bloomington).
   To add poetry to the mix, he has a lineal connection with the CSO, having studied with violinist Josef Gingold, a student of former CSO music director Eugene Ysaye (1918-22).
   That person is violinist/conductor Jaime Laredo, who led a superb, all-Mozart program with the CSO. Founding conductor of the orchestra's popular "Bach and Beyond" series (2001-03 at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music), Laredo stepped before the players as if he had never left. Also benefiting from the relationship was Israeli pianist Benjamin Hochman, who shone in his CSO debut.
   Laredo who would be a natural for the baroque and classical repertoire that gets short shrift on most CSO concerts crafted an ingenious program, comprising Mozart's first and last symphonies and his Piano Concerto No. 19, K.271 ("Jeunehomme"). To help project the sound and make it more immediate in the half-full (or less) hall, the acoustical towers behind the orchestra were moved forward about ten feet.
   Hochman, 26, exhibited a crystal clear tone and articulation to match in the concerto. The first movement cadenza sparkled like gemstones, while the quasi-operatic Andantino read like a soulful effusion, his long fingers traversing the keys with strength and finesse. The Presto finale rolled merrily along, with a charming Menuetto detour.
   Mozart's Symphony No. 1, K.16, composed at age 8, and No. 41 at 32, may be technically far apart, but the touch of genius fills both. The former, in three short movements, has simple ingredients, but how the child put them together! The first movement opened with a triadic theme that erupted gently like a sneeze. The minor-key Andante had a little catch in its throat, long notes in the horns answered by a soft figure in the cellos. The rapid finale was brief and jovial.
   Mozart's Symphony No. 41 ("Jupiter") is as Olympian its name implies and Laredo and the CSO glorified it with a performance of total artistry. Ensemble was immaculate, textures transparent and shot through with color. Wind choirs projected keenly, like veins in marble, and Laredo made the sudden dynamic contrasts clean and clear-cut.
   The second movement opened smooth as velvet in the muted strings, and there were some extraordinary textural blends, like variegated ribbons. Laredo put extra buoyancy in the Menuetto by taking it a bit slower than some conductors do. The final Allegro, crowning movement of the work, was full of exultant energy.
   The audience responded with a warm, prolonged, "welcome back." Repeat is 8 p.m. tonight at Music Hall.
(first published in The Cincinnati Post April 8, 2006)