In the Berkshire Symphony’s concert last Friday, “three American works … spanned the gamut from the cheerful neoclassicism of Walter Piston’s ‘Serenata for Orchestra’ to the hustle, bustle and honking horns of Gershwin’s ‘An American in Paris,’ with the gentle sadness of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto,” writes Andrew Pincus in Monday’s (11/20) Berkshire Eagle (Mass.). “Actually, a cry of pain, deeply personal, arises midway through Barber’s dark-hued work. The way that soloist Yevgeny Kutik, conductor Ronald Feldman and the student-professional orchestra made the outburst piercing, and then subsided back into brooding, was a telling moment in a strongly felt, technically suave performance…. Piston … seems largely forgotten. That’s a shame. His little three-movement ‘Serenata’ … proved a genial piece, tart, jumpy and lyrical by turns…. In place of Pops-style raucousness in Gershwin’s Parisian gambol, Feldman led the orchestra on a leisurely stroll through the boulevards … a winning way to hear the old favorite, especially when the strings brought symphonic richness to the blues theme.”
Posted November 22, 2017
