Music Review - Riverside Symphony - The Riverside Symphony, Displaced, Calls on Warmer Halls - Review

The Riverside Symphony plays only three concerts a year, but like every other group that normally performs at Alice Tully Hall, it has been displaced for the hall’s renovation. The silver lining is that it was able to try out the auditorium of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, Zankel Hall and, for the final concert of its season, on Wednesday evening, the 92nd Street Y.

What it will make of the experience gained in its travels remains to be seen, as does the acoustical state of Alice Tully Hall when it reopens in February. But the hall at the 92nd Street Y seemed to agree with the orchestra, which sounded fuller and warmer than it often did at Lincoln Center.

The program’s main draw was the New York premiere of George Tsontakis’s Violin Concerto No. 2 (2003), for which Mr. Tsontakis won the $200,000 Grawemeyer Award in 2005. A compact, eventful score, it makes good use of the orchestra’s resources — particularly woodwind and percussion timbres that create an otherwordly shimmer and sparkle — and treats the violin as both a distinctive solo voice and an essential strand within the ensemble texture.

In its solo passages the violin often projects an old-fashioned rhapsodic style, which was magnified by Yevgeny Kutik’s rich, sweet tone. The orchestral writing often had a sharper harmonic edge and used the solo violin more assertively and with an earthier sound. George Rothman led a thoroughly prepared, energetic performance.

But there was something wrong with this picture. With no disrespect toward Mr. Rothman and the Riverside Symphony — just the opposite, in fact — wouldn’t you think that a work awarded a prestigious prize would find a berth on a New York Philharmonic program?

Apparently not. The Philharmonic, after all, hired the composer Steven Stucky to explain new music to its audiences but hasn’t yet gotten around to playing Mr. Stucky’s remarkable Second Concerto for Orchestra, which won the Pulitzer Prize the same year Mr. Tsontakis won the Grawemeyer. It’s no wonder people think of the classical music world as sleepy. But they should look more closely at what independent ensembles are up to.

Mr. Rothman opened his concert with a trim, polished account of Mozart’s Divertimento in D (K. 136) and devoted the second half to a Romantic rarity, Gounod’s Symphony No. 1. The Gounod isn’t much; mostly it recycles moves from Beethoven and Haydn, all dated by the time Gounod wrote it in 1855. But Mr. Rothman and his players gave it a solid, vital reading that made it seem worth hearing once.

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