Chamber Orchestra of New York Brings to Life the Works of Strauss & More

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Parent Category: Other Festivals

Category: Music

Published on Saturday, 16 December 2017 20:51

Written by Jack Angstreich

Salvatore Di Vittorio

The outstanding musicians of the Chamber Orchestra of New York—composed of remarkably accomplished young professionals—returned to Weill Recital Hall—on the evening of Saturday, December 9th—for a superb concert devoted to music for strings, under the sterling direction of Salvatore Di Vittorio.

The program opened splendidly with a lucid account of Edvard Grieg’s lovely Holberg Suite of 1884, a work of neoclassicism—or more properly, neo-Baroque—avant la lettre and a precursor to modern works like Maurice Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin.

The conductor then led the musicians in the world premiere of his own composition, the excellent Preludio Sentimentale, mostly derived from the first movement of his Sinfonia No. 1 for strings from 1999, described as his “first mature, published orchestral work.”

The first half of the concert closed with another crystalline reading, here of the mesmerizing Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis of 1910 by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

The evening concluded with its most impressive work, an astonishing realization of the magnificent, dazzling Metamorphosen of Richard Strauss from 1945. I look forward to seeing these wonderful artists again in coming appearances.