“Santa Rosa Symphony concerts usually feature high-powered soloists imported from afar, but for their recent ‘Bring on the Strings’ concert set, they stuck close to home, thrusting their principal violin, viola, and cello into the limelight,” writes Steve Osborn in Tuesday’s (3/28) San Francisco Classical Voice. “Violinist Joseph Edelberg and violist Elizabeth Prior shared the stage for a dazzling performance of Mozart’s much-loved Sinfonia Concertante. Adelle-Akiko Kearns was the cello soloist for Gabriel Fauré’s rarely heard Élegie. Edelberg and Prior could not be more different as players…. His tone is pure but restrained; hers is warm and flexible…. This was a duet of two distinctive voices that complemented each other…. Fauré’s Élegie … was lovingly played by Kearns…. Kearns got a better chance to shine after intermission, when she played the frequent cello solos in Sibelius’s Symphony No. 4…. Conductor Bruno Ferrandis is well versed in Sibelius’s intricate musical architecture, and he pushed forward relentlessly…. Most remarkable were the last few dozen bars, when the orchestra seems headed to an ear-shattering conclusion but instead faded out elegantly.… [In] Sibelius’s more-than-familiar Finlandia … the playing was authoritative and the applause thunderous.”
Posted April 3, 2017
