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Cellist Finkelshteyn Shines, "Carmina Burana" Delivers

Mary Ellyn Hutton
Posted: Jan 18, 2015 - 2:06:41 PM in reviews_2015

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Ilya Finkelshteyn
Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana,” hardy perennial of the concert hall, returned to the Music Hall stage Saturday night in Cincinnati.

Performed by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the May Festival Chorus (directed by Robert Porco), the Cincinnati Children’s Choir (led by Robyn Lana) and three fine vocal soloists, all led by CSO music director Louis Langrée, it was more than just a shout out. It was a beautifully nuanced performance, one that explored each of the work’s 24 poems with the greatest musicality.

The poems (from a medieval set discovered in the 19th century in a Benedictine monastery) are often bawdy – the CSO itself dubbed the work “sex, drugs and rock and roll” in promotional materials for the concert – but there are also odes to nature and the universality of love.

The weekend’s concert was also special for the performance by CSO principal cellist Ilya Finkelshteyn of the Cello Concerto by Robert Schumann, which opened the program.

Finkelshteyn is one of the CSO’s “stars,” and he gave the Schumann Concerto a transcendent reading. Instantly enveloping was Finkelshteyn’s smooth, warm tone, which engaged the listener across the instrument’s wide range. He performed on a fine 1720 instrument by Domenico Montagnana, on loan from cellist Lynn Harrell, adding to the signal nature of the event.

The three-movement work, one of the composer’s last before succumbing to the mental illness that plagued his life (theorized to have been manic-depressive disorder complicated by organic brain disease, according to Jonathan Kramer’s program note), the work combines lyricism with virtuosity. Finkelshteyn tugged at the heart with the former, while displaying ease and fluidity with the latter.

A notable feature of the work is the luscious interplay between the soloist and principal cellist in the second movement, where associate principal Dan Culnan complemented Finkelshteyn beautifully.

“Carmina Burana” drew a full-house and listeners were not disappointed, from the familiar opening chorus “O Fortuna” (“O Fortune, like the moon you ever wane”) to its repeat at the end. Balances were superb, rhythms were pointed and exact, and soloists Sarah Tynan, soprano, Nicholas Phan, tenor and Matthew Worth, baritone, displayed fine voices, abetted at times by some on-point acting. Langrée and the CSO, a huge array, including piano, celeste and a raft of percussion, gave it all the color it needed, from trumpet fanfares to principal bassoonist William Winstead’s aching lines in the song of the roasted swan, where tenor Phan fanned himself with his hand as the swan turned on the spit.

Highlights -- too numerous to mention -- would include the following:

         The Chorus’ sweet, still ode to spring (“Winter’s army is conquered and put to flight”)

         Baritone Worth’s “Omnia sol temperat,” (“All things are tempered by the sun”), where in the springtime, a young man’s fancy turns “to thoughts of love”

         The CSO, a rhythmic delight in the dance movement preceding "Floret silva" ("The noble forest"), and in the gentle, caressing round dance

         The Chorus’“Were diu werit alle min” (“If the whole world were mine”), capped by a lusty shout

         Baritone Worth’s indignant “Estuans interius” (“Seething inside”) about succumbing to lust

         Tenor Phan’s “Olim lacus colueram” (“Once I swam in lakes”), where you could almost feel the roasting swan’s suffering (compliments here to bassoonist Winstead, also)

         Baritone Worth and the men’s voices in “Ego sum abbas Cucaniensis” (“I am the abbot of Cucany”), followed by the boisterous drinking song “In taberna quando sumus” (“When we are in the tavern”)

         The sweet-voiced Children’s Choir and soprano Tynan in “Amor volat undique” (“Love flies everywhere”)

         Baritone Worth in “Dies, nox et omnia” (“Night and all the world”), where the he handled falsetto nimbly, and with the Chorus in “Circa mea pectora” (“In my breast”)

         Soprano Tynan in the tender “In trutina”) (“On the scales”) where a maiden ponders surrendering her virginity, and in “Dulcissime” (“Sweetest boy”) where she does, with a high intervallic leap

         “Ave formosissima” (“Hail, most previous jewel”) celebrating the triumph of love.

   The concert repeats at 2 p.m. Sunday at Music Hall. Information at www.cincinnatisymphony.org