IN PERFORMANCE: CLASSICAL MUSIC
By JAMES R. OESTREICH
Published: October 29, 1994
They Come From Wales, But They Don't Sing Avery Fisher Hall
Even if the concert of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the United Nations on Monday had been open to the public, few Welshophiles could have attended, since the country's favorite musical son, the baritone Bryn Terfel, was making his New York recital debut at Lincoln Center. As it was, the rampant Terfelmania may have enhanced the size and enthusiasm of the audience for the public repeat of the BBC program on Wednesday evening.
Led by its music director, Tadaaki Otaka, the orchestra proved a good one, generally pleasing in its corporate sound but sometimes drab in the solos. The big-tune pieces, Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet" and Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, have often been heard to like or better effect. But in British fare, Mr. Otaka and the BBC had something distinctive to say.
They gave the "Dance Fantasy," by Daniel Jones, a Welsh composer who died last year, a spirited reading despite compounding metric complexities. They also gave a stylish and sensitive account of Elgar's "Enigma Variations," sustaining a mere thread of sound in the crucial hushed entry to "Nimrod."
Shura Cherkassky, the piano soloist in the Rachmaninoff, alternated broad melodism with nervous, impish animation. JAMES R. OESTREICH