Comedians (and journalists) invariably cause trouble for themselves when they fail to lead with their best stuff. In the classical music business, however, you're better off if you save your best for last. That's what listeners remember best, and that's what David Zinman and the Baltimore Symphony did last night in Meyerhoff Hall.
The orchestra and its music director concluded their short, relatively lightweight program with Elgar's "Enigma" Variations. Zinman has always had a flair for Elgar -- the composer's idiomatic warmth, passion and intensity seem to come naturally to this conductor -- and he and his orchestra have made several successful recordings of Elgar's music, including one of the "Enigma" Variations.
Zinman's long experience with the work showed, with each variation growing naturally out of the one preceding it. There were a number of fine moments: the flexibility of the conductor's rubato made possible a splendid transition from the noble and spacious climax of "Nimrod" to a delightfully graceful "Dorabella"; and his dynamism made the finale erupt.
The first half of the concert was less satisfying. Zinman is usually as fine an interpreter of Dvorak as he is of Elgar. His reading of the composer's "Scherzo Capriccioso" began beautifully. The sound he drew from the orchestra was warm and mellow, and his delicately and sensitively inflected treatment of the work's second theme in the strings could not have been better. But as the piece began to drive toward its exciting conclusion, something went awry: The playing became sluggish and the ensemble sloppy.
And the subsequent performance of Ernst von Dohnanyi's "Variations on a Nursery Theme" for piano and orchestra was less than scintillating. Piano soloist Jeffrey Kahane gave a fine account of the piano part, playing with neat, crisp articulation and a sense of wit. But I suspect that the piece was either new to Zinman's repertory or that he had not programmed it for some time. The vehemence of the orchestral introduction -- the false pomposity of which sets up the work's central joke -- sounded overdone; the variations in style seemed poorly managed; and the music's lyrical episodes were as lacking in warmth as its witty ones in charm.
The program will be repeated tonight at 8.
Pub Date: 2/21/98
