“Take your time. Breathe. Something beautiful is happening here,” writes Peter Dobrin in Wednesday’s (11/4) Philadelphia Inquirer. Philadelphia Orchestra Assistant Conductor Erina Yashima “doesn’t actually say any of this… but … it’s all there … in her wise, deliberate tempos and detailed phrasing, and in the warm sound she gets from an ensemble of about 40 strings…. In this week’s Philadelphia Orchestra online concert … she [conducted] George Walker’s … Lyric for Strings … Yashima uses a slightly quicker tempo than some others, which emphasizes the piece’s many mood shifts. There is anguish in it, melancholy for sure, and tragedy and tenderness…. Walker uses them to tell us that sorrow and hope often occupy the same space…. [In] Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings … by taking the opening movement at a slightly slower tempo, Yashima broadens the impact, giving the music a stately presence…. It’s hard to think of a more meaningful and touching interpretation than the one both orchestra and conductor came up with for the Serenade’s tender fourth movement, the ‘Larghetto.’ It is expressive without being treacly, and intense in all the right spots—characteristics that, given the qualities that make our orchestra special, bode well for this partnership.”
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