Fin de siècle at New Century Chamber Orchestra

The New Century Chamber Orchestra opened their new season last week with a program devoted to music from the turn of the 19th century to the 20th century featuring a young piano soloist who wasn't even born until the 21st Century.

Music Director Daniel Hope gave graceful introductions to all the short pieces in the first half of the program, which ranged from Elgar (Introduction and Allegro, Chanson de Matin) to an early Schoenberg Notturno for Strings and Harp, with a slow movement from a violin concerto by the Norwegian Christian Sinding seguing into Massenet's Meditation from the opera Thais. As usual, Hope was an impassioned, accomplished soloist fronting his newly energized string ensemble.

The Greek violinist Simon Papanas was appearing as "Guest Concertmaster" and besides leading the chamber orchestra, he played a violin transcription of the vocal line of Richard Strauss's famous song, Morgen. Though the accumulation of relentlessly pretty pieces during the first half of the concert started to feel like a collection of perfumed bon-bons, it was certainly fun.

The second half of the concert was devoted to one work, but gosh, what a piece it turned out to be. Like most of the audience, I had never heard Ernest Chausson's 1891 Concert for Violin, Piano and String Quartet, a four-movement, 40-minute-plus chamber work that was astonishingly good. The string quartet parts were expanded for the entire chamber orchestra, which worked better in some movements by giving the music symphonic heft and not as well when maximum clarity for the violin and piano was required, but it didn't matter because the "concert" was so consistently varied and given such a passionate performance. Adding to the excitement was the West Coast debut of the 16-year-old piano wunderkind Maxim Lando from New York. Daniel Hope pointed out that the piano part was one of the most challenging in the entire chamber music repertoire, and he was right, but Lando seemed to have absolutely no difficulties with its intricacies.

Best of all, Maxim looked like he was having a hell of a lot of fun, and his youthful energy seemed to spread through the entire ensemble. In addition, his shy, sly looks for synchronizing cues at Hope and the other instrumentalists while hunched over the piano were adorable. I'm not a big fan of youngsters onstage at professional, adult musical events, but Lando felt like an exception, and his musical virtuosity felt special for any age.