In Friday’s (5/13) San Jose Mercury News (California), Richard Scheinin writes, “Paquito D’Rivera’s Cape Cod Concerto for Clarinet, Piano and Orchestra is sassy and brash, a big work of imagination and humor that arrives like a birthday cake with exploding candles. After Symphony Silicon Valley gave the concerto its world premiere Thursday at the California Theatre, a woman in the audience walked up to the composer, who had flown in from New York and was seated in the ninth row, and said, ‘That was delicious, my friend.’ In this first of three performances led by conductor Leslie B. Dunner, the work’s deliciousness rose from the musicians on stage (and especially from clarinetist Jon Manasse and pianist Jon Nakamatsu, the rather stupendous soloists) and the ingredients so artfully blended by D’Rivera in the score (blues, tango, danzon and more). … The commitment of Dunner and the orchestra was palpable from the opening measures, dominated by tuba and marimba, before the entrance of an alluring, Gershwin-esque melody for a lazy afternoon, played by Manasse, whose tone was smoky and mellow as a glass of cabernet. Nakamatsu entered with a springing boogie woogie riff, and soon the birthday candles were exploding: piles of brass and percussion, rhythms clashing like cross-town traffic, the orchestra roaring like a bus careening ‘round a corner in a cartoon.”
Posted May 17, 2011
