“In the week preceding the fourth Masterworks Series concert in the Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra’s 2013/14 season, titled ‘Romancing the Cello,’ I have had difficulty leaving my apartment for the ice,” writes Kari Larsen at Saturday’s (2/8) PennLive.com (Central Pennsylvania). “How canny a decision it was to schedule this concert, featuring a brand new composition by Harrisburg’s own Steve Rudolph, as well as Dvorák’s Cello Concerto [with soloist Zuill Bailey] and Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, during such an unforgiving time.… All three … selections are comforting and non-combative without sparing virtuosity. The concert opened with a world premiere. An audience experienced for the first time Steve Rudolph’s orchestral composition ‘The Gift—A Tribute to Stuart Malina,’ commissioned … for the occasion of Tony Award-winning conductor Stuart Malina‘s 50th birthday on Dec. 30, 2012. Rudolph, founder of the Central PA Friends of Jazz … [by converting] the names of Malina and his loved ones to music via a kind of diatonic/chromatic numerology … embedded the conductor’s name into the piece.… Playful and deliberate, with uneven but ceaseless energy, ‘The Gift’ gives every section of the orchestra a chance to demonstrate what an invaluable asset it is to the whole.”
Posted February 10, 2014
