New York Classical Review

The thing about playing music is that, it’s just playing music. The cultural prestige certain institutions enjoy, the money behind them and the social ceremonies around such events, are all layered on top of something that happens all over the world all the time: people getting together to play music for an audience.

That is the distinct pleasure of community ensembles like the Greenwich Village Orchestra, which played Mozart, Wagner, and Strauss in the High School of Fashion Industries Sunday afternoon. It’s a semi-professional group in the sense that there’s no way anyone could be making any significant money preparing and putting on these concerts. But the spirit and musicianship were nothing to concede.

Under conductors Barbara Yahr and Christian Olson, who led Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll in the middle of the program, this was a well-played concert. The strings had a warm sound with some slight variances in intonation—nothing that would have been out of place from some notable European orchestras 100 years ago. The low strings were sharp, especially the basses, and the balance and blend produced a fine mix of colors.

In front of this, pianist David Kaplan took the stage to open the concert with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27. This was impressive all around. The phrasing in the orchestra was natural and musical, singing and sympathetic. Kaplan’s own playing was equally singing, with a ringing tone and a fascinating take on the music.

He played with the kind of understanding and personal vision that often sounded improvisatory, and idiosyncratic. There was purposeful energy in all his phrasing, at times he used it to push the pulse slightly ahead of the orchestra, at others to hold it back a sliver, depending on the pace of the music. This was playful but also expressive, making every phrase feel a little more important.

He also frequently doubled what the orchestra was playing, mostly through harmonies. This is a little-used archaic practice, and the ambivalent effect was evidence why—it was less the sound of soloist and orchestra playing together than an erasure of the structural antiphony between piano and orchestra. Still, there was a lyrical spontaneity to the cadenza, and Kaplan’s touch throughout expressed thoughtfulness and pleasure in Mozart’s notes.

Wagner’s lyrical-operatic tone-poem came after a short intermission. One of the rewards of the performance was the orchestra’s glowing sound under Olson, another the fine sense of forward movement. The horns were subdued, which narrowed the emotional effect of the music, but overall this was lovely.

The finale was Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, with Yahr back on the podium. The opening horn line was fully prominent, and though it might have had a little more snap, the clarinets and other winds were full of bounce and the strings had plenty of verve. This was properly lighthearted but not glib, with the right amount of seriousness for when the prankster meets his punishment, and a quick wink at the end.

The Greenwich Village Orchestra plays Charbrier, de Falla’s Suite from El amor brujo, with flamenco dancer Eva Conti, Audrey Morse’s Reconciliation and Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite, 3 p.m. Sunday, May 3. gvo.org