When you fly in from New York on just over 48 hours notice to fill in for a violinist on a relatively unknown concerto that’s never been played by the orchestra with whom you are soloing, you deserve a standing ovation.
Actually, you deserve a mid-concerto standing-o, or several in the case of Friday night’s Tucson Symphony Orchestra concert with Siwoo Kim at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall.
Not that everyone in the hall was standing after Kim‘s thrilling performance of the first movement of Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 1, but the handful of folks who stood and applauded were sincere in their appreciation.
Kim was tapped by the TSO on Wednesday, Feb. 14, to fill in for Bulgarian-American violinist Bella Hristova, who was supposed to perform with the TSO Friday, Feb. 15, and Sunday, Feb. 17. Hristova was apparently ill and called off the appearance, which would have been her Tucson debut.
The fact that Kim was ready to pull the trigger on Price’s concerto with so little notice is impressive. Even though Price, the first African-American female composer to have her work performed by a major orchestra, wrote the concerto in 1939, it was MIA until it was discovered in 2009 in an abandoned house where Price spent summers. The concerto has only been trending the last few years.
But on Friday, Kim performed it with a confidence that belied his relative newness to the piece; the one other time we could find that he had played it was last November with the Walla Walla Symphony in Washington.
For most of the audience, it was the first time hearing Price’s concerto, which opens with a purposeful homage to Tchaikovsky before taking on its own distinctive personality, one rooted in folk melodies and soulful spirituals. Kim lingered with the gorgeous melodies and extended virtuosic solo passages that went from lush interludes to fits of frenzy. From his bow, he summoned the ghosts of spirituals past, the resonance and joy intermingled with sorrow inherent in many of those old tunes.
In the final movement, the South Korean-born/Ohio-raised violinist took Price’s perpetual motion and reigned it in just enough that he retained control of the chaos and let the melodies breathe with the TSO, under the baton of guest conductor Aram Demirjian, following his lead.
Price’s concerto was bookended with Arturo Márquez’s bright and energetic “Conga del Fuego Nuevo,” with its nods to Mexican folk songs and mariachi (kudos to principal trumpet Hayato Tanaka’s exceptional performance); and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2, which has one of the most beautiful melodies the Russian composer ever wrote.
Demirjian guided the orchestra in a lush performance of Rachmaninoff’s deeply romantic and melodic work that pulsates from the agitated opening passage to gorgeously lush strings that soar against the quiet rumble of timpani and muted horns. Demirjian made us hold our breath as the strings soared before bursting in a flurry of energy.
Throughout the hourlong symphony, Demirjian balanced the energetic bursts with Rachmaninoff’s lush singing melodies including the familiar adagio that’s repeated a couple of times. Watching Concertmaster Lauren Roth as she leaned into the passage, drawing her bow purposefully to bring out the full force of that melody, made you suspect that that was one of her favorite moments of the evening.
The TSO will repeat the concert at 2 p.m. Sunday at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave.
