Classical Concert Reviews Cinci

@cincysymphony continued its slate of concerts for January 2025 with a beautiful program titled The Magic Cello, pairing new and old works based on fairy tales with one of the most well-known cello concertos of the 19th century.
The new fairy tales came in the form of a world premiere symphony, Fantastica, by the Latin Grammy-nominated Peruvian composer Jimmy López (@jimmylopezmusic). Inspired by characters and events in Michael Ende’s 1979 novel The Neverending Story and cast in five movements spanning 25 minutes of music, it shows off a sound world that could be called 21st-century neo-Romantic. Much of the musical material is heavily built on film music composers like Howard Shore, John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith with subtle hints of Paul Dukas and Claude Debussy, with its extensive use of percussion like tam-tam and vibraphone as well as evocative writing for brass and strings. Guest conductor Christian Reif drew out all these sonorities with excitement and radiant beauty.
There followed a rare opportunity to hear a CSO musician as a concerto soloist, as principal cellist Ilya Finkelshteyn (@ilfink1217) gave an effervescent performance of Camille Saint-Saëns’ first Cello Concerto. While not as virtuosic as many other concertos of this period, it does demonstrate Saint-Saëns’ capabilities of writing for the cello, in a style similar to Beethoven. Finkelshteyn’s technique was definitely the best aspect of the performance, relying more on lyrical sensitivity rather than flair or virtuosity. The audience at Music Hall seemed more than pleased with the results.
Following a vibrant reading of the overture to Mozart’s final opera Die Zauberflöte, the orchestra closed with one of the most unique, yet least-played 20th-century symphonies, the seventh of Sergei Prokofiev. Completed in 1952, a year before his death, it is among his most subdued works from this part of his career, similar to Mahler’s last symphony (if on a more concise scale) and stylistically predicting the late works of Shostakovich.
Highlights included witty use of percussion in the second and fourth movements and tender hearted moments from the strings in the first and third.
Bravi tutti!