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Tchaikovsky Rococo VariationsMassenet Meditation from Thais
Honolulu Symphony


Soloist soars with 17th-century cello


Cellist Zuill Bailey, guest soloist with the Honolulu Symphony this week, performed on a 1693 Matteo Gofriller cello that had an absolutely gorgeous tone.

Bailey sounded as though playing is both privilege and joy.

His choice of music, Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33, displayed his breadth of style. Much like blues in jazz, theme-and-variations pieces consist of a recurring framework for varied improvisation or invention.

Bailey played passionately, with Romantic abandon, using dramatic shadings — delicate, even fragile pianissimos, wild flights of virtuosity, aching melodies, fiery discourse. Musician and instrument were a good match, speaking clearly as one voice.

In encore, Bailey performed an arrangement of Jules Massenet's "Meditation for Thais," which was composed for violin but, as Bailey explained, "Everything sounds better on cello."

Honolulu Advertiser
Honolulu, Hawaii
March 2008
By Ruth O. Bingham



Elgar Cello Concerto
NE Pennsylvania Philharmonic


Cello soloist shines with Philharmonic; music director extends his contract


WILKES-BARRE - The Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic began its 36th season in grand fashion on Friday night at the F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts in a concert featuring internationally renowned cellist Zuill Bailey and an announcement of gratifying news concerning its musical leader, Maestro Lawrence Loh.

Prior to the beginning of the season of Passion For Romance, Loh had agreed to a contract extension with the orchestra and that announcement buoyed an evening that would be filled with spectacular music and an incredible soloist performance before an audience of 1,250 people.

The orchestra opened the season with a spectacular interpretation of Giuseppe Verdi's "Overture to the Opera Nabucco." The players needed no warmup to get the concert started. The orchestra sounded in mid-season form from the very start.

For Edward Elgar's "Concerto for Violincello and Orchestra in E Minor, Opus 85," Bailey yielded an unfailing beauty playing his 1693 Matteo Goffriller cello.

Bailey demonstrated a controlled vibrato rendering a rare combination of technical mastery and improvisational latitude that worked to stay true to the piece yet revealing of Bailey's talents. Bailey is a world-class artist who mesmerized the audience with his astonishing precision.

Following intermission, Loh conducted Piotr Tchaikovsky's "Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, Opus 64."

Citizens' Voice
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
09/29/2007
BY ALEXANDER CHOMAN
MUSIC CRITIC




Elgar Cello Concerto
Winston Salem Symphony Orchestra


Zuill Bailey’s engaging work as soloist drove that point home again and again, as did the composer, an Englishman who came up with a work that rivals similar efforts by Dvorak and Schumann. You hear that in the expert way the orchestration exploits and complements the soloist. A lesser composition might have overwhelmed him.

Bailey, playing on a rare Matteo Gofriller from 1693, brought out playfulness in more fiery sections that made the audience laugh and the soloist wink back in approval. How nice to be reminded of how much fun making music can be. Bailey revealed a soulfulness that was perfect for the opening movement’s long-lined melody, and he transformed momentary plucked and bowed fragments into a more complex whole of parts that cohered. The final movement sizzled. Moody coordinated the proceedings well.


Winston-Salem Journal
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
September 17, 2007
Ken Keuffel



Dvorak Cello Concerto
Fairfax Symphony Orchestra


Gold balloons, gold-highlighted programs and an extensive lobby display of a half-century of photos and articles left no doubt about what the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra was celebrating at George Mason University's Center for the Arts Saturday night.

The 50th anniversary celebration also marked Music Director William Hudson's 35 years leading the orchestra -- and 43 years for violist Lisa Baltzer. Richard Strauss's "Vienna Philharmonic Fanfare," all brass and timpani, was a suitably sonorous and grandiose opener.

The evening's highlight was Dvorak's Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104. Fairfax native Zuill Bailey turned in an intimate, lyrical performance on his 1693 Matteo Gofriller cello -- with his sister, Allison Bailey, as concertmaster. The violin-cello duets in the finale were highlights, as were the tender sections that Dvorak based on his song "Leave Me Alone" -- in memory of his much-loved sister-in-law Josefina, whose favorite it was.

The rest of the evening brought lighter fare. Robert Russell Bennett's "Symphonic Picture of 'Porgy and Bess' " smooths Gershwin's deliberately rough edges, but the orchestra played it rousingly. Among three John Williams works, the "Imperial March" from "The Empire Strikes Back" was most effective. "Liberty Fanfare" and the march from the film "1941" were comparatively stolid and pale -- especially in contrast to Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever," an encore that produced the golden glow of prolonged applause.


Washington Post
Washington, DC
June 4, 2007
Mark J. Estren




Beethoven Triple Concerto
Toronto Symphony Orchestra

Legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman showed a near-capacity crowd at Roy Thomson Hall last night how a conductor doesn't have to lord over the orchestra in order to be in complete control of the music-making

The 61-year-old may be a towering figure as an artist – increasingly so as a conductor around the world – but he sat in a chair on the podium, just barely above the other musicians' eyes. In that position, he looked and acted as a first among equals, coaxing a particularly burnished sound out of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

The program consisted of two perennial favourites, the Triple Concerto for violin, cello and piano by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), more often heard on disc than on a live stage, and the Symphony No. 4 by Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893).

Perlman made these scores sound fresh by letting the notes breathe and giving them space in which to expand and mingle.

Often the tempos were a bit slow, but the payoff was in glowing melodies from the strings and a lively crispness from the woodwinds and brass.

Rather than just sounding big and bold, there were moments of deeply affecting softness in the Tchaikovsky that carried far more emotion than simple blasts of a brass chorus.

For the Triple Concerto, Perlman enlisted the help of three talented young soloists who often play together as a chamber trio: his daughter, pianist Navah Perlman, violinist Giora Schmidt and cellist Zuill Bailey.

Bailey's long, intense phrases were particularly beautiful, but the three musicians played together and with the orchestra as if the whole concerto were an elaborate chamber creation. They made the vastness of the hall shrink around them in a charmed music circle.

Toronto Star
Toronto, CANADA
May 24, 2007
John Terauds


Beethoven Triple Concerto

Toronto Symphony

The program opened with Beethoven's Triple Concerto, Op. 56, featuring the Perlman, Schmidt, Bailey Trio. The pianist, Navah Perlman, is Itzhak's daughter, and a credit she is to him and herself: musical, assured, brilliant. The violinist, Giora Schmidt, still in his 20s, is a star pupil of Itzhak, technically flawless, musically refined. The cellist, Zuill Bailey, is enormously gifted and splendid. His solo at the opening of the Largo was heart-stopping.

Toronto Globe and Mail
Toronto, CANADA
May 25, 2007
KEN WINTERS



Debussy Cello Sonata
Montreal Chamber Music Festival

Zuill Bailey was a superb advocate of Debussy's Cello Sonata; even the pizzicato notes of the Serenade movement were melodious. This American has both technical security and an improvisatory spirit.

The Gazette
Montreal, CANADA
May 17, 2007
ARTHUR KAPTAINIS


Dvorak Cello Concerto
"MSO ends with magial evening"

Saturday evening the Macon Symphony Orchestra presented its sixth subscription concert of its 30th year. For this season-ending concert, renowned cellist Zuill Bailey returned to the sage at the Grand Opera House, playing Antonin Dvorak's "Cello Concerto in B minor, Opus 104."

The soloist's superb technique and control brought added dimension to this already heroic work. His approach was that of the 19th's century romanticists' manner, allowing the tempos to subtly accelerando or rallentando as is suggested by the mood of the music.

During the development section, Bailey gradually built momentum through incremental increases in tempo and volume. This perfectly prepared the listeners for the climactic and impeccably executed octave passage that was the interface between the development section and the recapitulation.

Yet despite its virtuosity and its rhythmic freedom, he made the movement dance in the Czech manner. A poignant duet between the solo cello and a single flute provided another magical moment in this first movement.

The second movement, an adagio, highlighted the fine quality of the MSO's wind section. Folk and lyrical elements came into play and Bailey displayed his incredible versatility in producing a wide palettte of tonal shading. From the barest whisper of a purely white sound to the angst of a nearly vicious attack, and from rich gushing warmth to the penetration focus of playing on the bridge of the instrument, Bailey exploited the full potential of the cello.


The Telegraph
Macon, Georgia
May 7, 2007
K.S. Morrison



Beethoven Cello Sonatas 1/2/3

The bywords here are subtlety and drama-both very important adjuncts to Beethoven's sound world. I have seldom heard such attention paid to follow-through of dynamics, general balence between instruments, and a willingness to pile on the volume come what may-or to whisper when it is called for. The variety of tonal expression on the part of both artists is remarkable, and so is the subtle use of rubato. I only wish they had had time to take the second repeat in the G-minor Sonata. they could have found something fresh to say, I'm sure. But if you're going to do the sonatas in chronological order without leavening them with the three early sets of varaitions, you end up with a long program like this one, and no development-recap repeats need apply.
As it stands, this is a remarkable disc. The recorded sound is half of the attraction. The sound of the instruments is unusually realistic and exciting. I look forard to a further installment.

D Moore
American Record Guide
Vol. 70, No. 2
March/April 2007




Beethoven Cello Sonatas 1/2/3


There's the sign of a promising Beethoven cello sonata cycle when the early works don't make you want to skip to the later ones. So it is in this first in a two-volume set of Beethoven cello/piano works - partly because Zuill Bailey and Simone Dinnerstein are able to access the music's youthful energy, partly because the performers have true charisma in their surface sound and a hyper-alert way with a phrase.

And once you do get to the great Op. 69 cello sonata, Bailey and Dinnerstein show themselves to be one of the most fascinating chamber-music duos anywhere, in performances that are practically bursting with heart and soul. They take chances at every turn, with results that consistently take you deeper into the music. Those who have heard Dinnerstein's local concerts, sponsored by Astral Artistic Services, could mistake her for having a miniaturist's temperament. Not here. Sound and gestures are big; the vision is even bigger.

Philadelphia Inquirer
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
November 26, 2006
David Patrick Stearns



Bloch Schelomo


Cellist resonates in unusual program


If you came to last night's Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra's concert at UK's Singletary Center expecting pretty melodies to hum on your way out, you were grumbling instead.

But there were compensations, foremost among them, guest cellist Zuill Bailey. Bailey gets a lot of publicity for his sex appeal, which resides not just in a man's looks, but also in a man's manner.

You could blindfold yourself, listen to Bailey's cello, and know that you are in the presence of a very engaging human being. His playing was emotional but without excess, passionate but with well-calculated zeal.

Ernest Bloch's Schelomo, on which he partnered with the Philharmonic, is a difficult work to be zealous about. It often sounds like movie music (which is ironic since there weren't many movies around in 1916 when Bloch wrote it). Bailey's cello was the biblical King Solomon, continually in danger of being overwhelmed by his fractious people.

There were indeed a few frayed edges in the depiction of the harried multitude (the accompanying orchestra), but the cello always assumed true leadership, not by volume of sound, but by sorrowful, sure authority. By the end, there was solace as serene as a sunset.


Herald-Leader
Lexington, Kentucky
Nov. 18, 2006
Loren Tice




Zuill Bailey, Awadagin Pratt Duo Recital


To the eye, they were as different as A and Z: Fairfax native Zuill Bailey, cellist, with the shoulder-length hair of a 19th-century poet, dressed entirely in black; and Awadagin Pratt, dreadlocked pianist from Pittsburgh via Sierra Leonean ancestry, in a bright yellow patterned shirt.

But to the ear, they were as one -- a single sound of bowed and percussive components, balanced in unfailing beauty.

At the Barns at Wolf Trap on Friday night, the sound permeated Mendelssohn's "Variations Concertantes," Op. 17, as the instruments' inherent tonal contrasts blended smoothly.

For Shostakovich's Sonata for Cello and Piano in D Minor, Op. 40, the sound reflected the work's contrasts. In the heartfelt first movement, Bailey enfolded his 1693 Matteo Goffriller cello and played it lovingly. The grotesque dance of the second movement was a whirl of harmonics, pizzicati and complex bowing techniques. Well-matched intensity persisted through the dark third-movement meditation and the showy finale.

Estonian composer Arvo Part's "Mirror in the Mirror" dates to 1978 but bespoke much earlier times, its piano triads and extended cello line producing feelings of peace and tranquillity.

The performers' give-and-take was especially impressive in Brahms's Cello Sonata No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 38. Here the piano, which often dominates thematically, can easily overwhelm the cello, but Pratt was too musicianly (or too gentlemanly) for that. A and Z sounded not like opposites but -- as in the alphabet -- like two parts of the same totality.


Washington Post
Washington DC
November 2006
Mark J. Estren




Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1


Anyone with doubts about the future of classical music didn’t see Zuill Bailey play Thursday night with the Waco Symphony Orchestra.

The handsome young cellist pulled a Waco Hall audience into the jagged rhythms and grazing dissonances of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 through the sheer force of his passion for the music.

And if the caliber of his musicianship wasn’t enough, the 34-year-old Bailey visited with patrons before and after his concert to explain the piece and chat about his work.

His performance highlighted the inaugural concert of the WSO’s 45th anniversary season, though close behind it was the orchestra’s glowing, rousing rendition of Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”), a marvelous example of ensemble playing in spite of occasional overbearing stridence from the brass section.

The black-clad, dark-haired Bailey tackled the concerto’s challenges with relish: the first movement’s sharp, insistent rhythms, restless motion and high range; the second’s mournful, singing lines dotted with lighter musical phrases, like happy memories recalled in sadness; a cadenza accented by eerie, sliding pitches; and a finale of insistent urgency, with furious bowing and plucking.

The orchestra, led by Music Director Stephen Heyde, ably complemented Bailey, but it was the cello front and center in this work


Tribune-Herald
Waco, Texas
October 2006
Carl Hoover


Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1


Shostakovich Centenary

For many years in the 1900s, we knew little of music in the Soviet Union. One of the country's greatest composers, Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), lived his 69 years through the reign of Stalin and two world wars. His relationship with Soviet authorities was complex and shifting: At times, his music was denounced; other times, he received praise from the government.

On this anniversary of his birth, it was most appropriate for the S.C. Philharmonic to perform his work so that we might hear and assess some of the music of a Russian whose compositions are major repertory in the Western world. His music is in the realm of tonal music though it is sometimes starkly inventive. It is often greatly extended and somewhat manic, but grounded in classical form and techniques. It is reflective of terror yet without a loss of optimism.

The very optimistic Festival Overture was composed just a few months after Stalin's death. It may have sounded "patriotic Russian" then, but now it sounds like "let's have a party." Extra brass players were all over the place.

The cello concerto was written to testify to the composer's love for his friend and colleague, the great cellist and conductor Mstilav Rostropovich. The immense joy of this concert was the appearance of the brilliant and charismatic Zuill Bailey as cello soloist, who turned in a performance that stacks right up with Rostropovich's 1960 premiere recording. The orchestra was completely up to providing a thrilling accompaniment, and the result was absolutely first-rate. This work also requires some extraordinary solo work from the horn ‹ in this case the Philharmonic's Bob Pruzin, who worked with Bailey and Smith with great aplomb.


Free Times
Columbia, South Carolina
October 2006
David Lowry




Cello-piano duo enchant audience


Heavenly music briefly held an audience in rapt attention Tuesday night at the Holland Performing Arts Center.

Inspired by the clarity of sound in the Kiewit Concert Hall during the first half of their program, cellist Zuill Bailey and pianist Awadagin Pratt changed their second half performance choice. They picked the emotional "Spiegel im Spiegel" ("Mirror in the Mirror") by contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.

Notes hung in the air. The audience soaked them in as if they were gentle strokes of the hair and sips of luscious wine. Heads were still. Feet were still.

Compared to the complex Mendelssohn and Shostakovich compositions in the first half of the program, this Pärt piece for piano and cello was simple. The impact came from the way a single note, one finger strike on a single piano key for example, could convey a melody and resonate in the hall. The moment was simply perfect.

That said, the complexity of the other compositions on the program did showcase the impressive talents of both performers.

Cellist Bailey is a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory and the Julliard School. He has performed with major orchestras, including the San Francisco Symphony and the Illinois Symphony.

Pianist Pratt earned diplomas in piano, violin and conducting at the Peabody Conservatory. He is an assistant professor of piano and artist in residence at the College Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati.

Bailey and Pratt have been friends for 10 years and occasionally perform together.

They opened the concert with the lush melodies of Mendelssohn's "Variations Concertantes." Then they presented the four movements of Shostakovich's Sonata for cello and piano in D minor, capturing the anger, sadness and melancholy of the composition.

The duo's last piece of the evening was Brahms' Sonata No. 1 for cello and piano in E minor, a richly textured piece that showed off the pianist's fluid style and the rich tones of Bailey's 1693 Matteo Goffriller cello.


World-Herald
Omaha, Nebraska
April 2006
JANE PALMER




Haydn Concerto in C Major
Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations


Between Stravinsky and Copland came two cello showcases for the considerable skills of Zuill Bailey. In Haydn's Cello Concerto in C Major, Bailey maintained a clean line with controlled vibrato so that the music's classical boundaries were never violated. This meant energey and forward motion in the first movement, a strong lyrical line in the slow movement, and excitement in the finale. The cellist's playing always had purpose, and the rich tones of his 1693 Goffriller cello was more successfull than most in overcoming Chrysler Hall's string unfriendly accoustic. This was evident as well in Tchaikovksy "Variations on a Rococo Theme," in which the cellist had bigger orchestral forces to contend with. He played with a fuller tone in keeping with the more Romantic nature of the music, and he sustained interest in what is one of Tchaikovksy's less interesting works.


Virginian Pilot
Norfolk, Virginia
April 2006
Paul Sayegh



Saint Saens Concerto No. 1
Massenet Meditation from Thais


Pablo Casals once said of the instrument he played so brilliantly, "The cello is like a beautiful woman who has not grown older, but younger with time, more slender, more supple, more graceful." Youthfulness, suppleness and grace were the hallmarks of Fairfax native Zuill Bailey's playing of his 1693 Matteo Goffriller cello with the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra at George Mason University's Center for the Arts on Saturday night.

Saint-Saens's Cello Concerto No. 1 sounded warm, sweet and rich, and Bailey's arrangement of the "Meditation" from Massenet's "Thais" was deeply heartfelt, duskier and less plaintive than it sounds on the violin. William Hudson led the orchestra -- with the cellist's sister, Allison Bailey, as concertmaster -- with subtlety and careful balance.



Washington Post
Washington DC
March 2006
Mark J. Estren



Haydn C Major Concerto
Tchaikovksy Rococo Variations


"The Reno Chamber Orchestra with cellist Zuill Bailey, a concert of near perfection"

Perfection, like grade inflation, is a much overused accolade. So the recent February pair of Reno Chamber Orchestra concerts will just have to settle for being near perfection.

Saturday night’s concert (2/25/06) got two spontaneous standing ovations based largely on the magnetism and exhilaration of cellist Zuill Bailey’s performances of Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra.

Largely based on Bailey’s impeccable and exciting playing, but not wholly based on the cellist’s exceptional talent. Conductor Theordore Kuchar and the Reno Chamber Orchestra were first-rate collaborators on the Haydn and Tchaikovsky and brought their share of orchestral dazzle and sumptuousness to Ernest Bloch’s intense and lovely Concerto Grosso No. 1, and Johann Christian Bach’s Symphony for Double Orchestra in E-flat Major.

It was a snapshot program grandly designed to give an overview of music s worlds of classicism, modernism and romanticism. The Bach Symphony for Double Orchestra has enough invention and elegance to satisfy the most let’s-not-move beyond the 1800s reactionary concertgoer. Are there any still extant? Not too many judging from the audience’s mildly tepid response. What a fresh, together piece and what a fresh, together presentation it got.

The Bloch, like Disney, is its own wonderful world of color. From its vivid prelude, through its serenely gorgeous Pastorale and Rustic Dances, to its robust fugue, Kuchar elicited a rainbow of textural and harmonic colorations. The brashness of Kuchar’s approach worked splendidly with Bloch’s intensity, rhythmic vigor, and penchant for the unusual in orchestral coloration. The passion of the performance moved the Bloch from inventive revelation to intense drama. In short, it was a blast to experience.

Zuill Bailey was also a blast to experience.

Watching Bailey play is like watching Johnny Depp in “Pirates” of the Carribean. Casually dressed in dark slacks, a shirt with open collar, and what looked like a brown blazer, the magnetic Mr. Bailey and cello create an instant rapport with listeners. This exceptional cellist plays with the same personal identification with his craft that great singers have with the intimacy of their voice. Take the greatest singer you know who touches your heart with their singing, then transfer that wonderful sense of bonding with Bailey’s cello playing and the rapture of one can be understood as the rapture of the other.

The Haydn was impeccably brought off with loads of athletic virtuosity. Streamlined and quickly paced, Bailey, Kuchar and orchestra set sail on Haydn’s wonderful adventure for a breezy classical ride.

Far from breezy, but nonetheless its own whirlwind adventure, Tchaikovsky’s homage to the Mozart era - his Variations on a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra - was also a ride to remember. The spareness of Tchaikovsky’s scoring and the immediacy of the melodic flow were the perfect vehicle to glue audience to cellist, and cellist to cello, orchestra and conductor for a presentation of rapture and technical wizardry that lead to, as one musicologist called it, delightful nostalgia.

Much like Judi Dench in “Mrs. Henderson Presents”, a movie for nostalgia lovers (and and fans of Ms. Dench) that can be seen over and over again, Bailey, Kuchar and the Reno Chamber Orchestra’s take on the Tchaikovsky is a take that can be heard over and over again. It was terrific.

Bailey is young, gifted, highly musical, easy to get along with and handsome. If that isn’t a recipe for success, what is?

Reno, Nevada
February 2006
Jack Neal



Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1


"Cellist steals and shares the show at the Arlington"


It was another weekend with the Santa Barbara Symphony with another promising and eager young contender at the podium. The search for a new conductor to fill Giselle Ben-Dor's spot continues into its second season of transition. The latest auditioning candidate was Daniel Meyer, a resident conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony and the newly appointed music director of North Carolina's Asheville Symphony Orchestra.

On the evidence of Sunday afternoon's symphony concert at the Arlington Theatre, Mr. Meyer exudes earned confidence and clarity from the podium, without excess or apparent quirks. He delivered the goods reliably in a program framed by repertoire pillars of Mozart and Dvorak, around a potent Shostakovich centerpiece. Our symphony responded in mostly fine form, no doubt acclimated by now to the musical chairs game of transient conductors at the helm.

Beyond matters of second-guessing the candidate's job suitability, though, the real magic of this concert was the result of a palpable musical accord between conductor, orchestra and cello soloist Zuill Bailey. The subject was Shostakovich's strangely gripping Cello Concerto No. 1.

Santa Barbara has been reeling in Shostakovich lately, we're happy to report, just in time for a large-scale re-evaluation of the great Russian composer's 20th century music. His epic Seventh Symphony, conducted by Ms. Ben-Dor in May, was the highlight of last season, and the Cello Concerto is a good early bet as one of the current season's high points.

A brisk and beefy reading of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" overture served as the on-ramp to the Shostakovich Concerto, written in 1959 for the great cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. In the outer movements, the concerto teems with the restless vigor so central to the composer's signature style. Romantic instincts are burnished and roughed-up by subtle Modernist brushwork, and the music maintains a delicate balance between melodicism and "difficult" musical notions.

This is a great showpiece for a cellist, and not only in terms of grandstanding pyrotechnics -- although that's part of the fabric, especially in the mad flurries of the finale. More importantly, it's a concerto demanding sensitivity to its pining tenderness and meditative airs, in the second movement and especially once the spotlight focuses on the soloist in the "Cadenza."


One of this work's key features, the Cadenza section is a movement unto itself. Its challenge to a soloist's mettle is that of summoning up a kind of musical dream state, to impress with introspection before things grow suddenly and increasingly manic, leading into the orchestral throes of the Allegro. In this finale, percolating energies and driving eighth notes suggest marching in dizzy, wavering patterns, with the cellist weaving crazily in the metric maze.

Mr. Bailey beautifully conquered the score's implicit challenges. Now based in El Paso, Texas, but an itinerant and in-demand soloist, the cellist seemed particularly enveloped in the music, yet stoic. Sometimes, he gazed off distractedly while playing, duly lost in the score. But, when the time came, he was also fully engaged in the orchestral setting, blending the elements making up the ideal orchestral soloist.

Afterward, spirits were justly high onstage, and Mr. Bailey generously acknowledged the orchestra, and he hugged both Mr. Meyer and longtime principal cellist Geoffrey Rutkowski.

After the alternate visceral thrill and hushed enigma of the Shostakovich, the program -- perhaps inevitably -- turned anticlimactic. Post-intermission, the concert reverted to the symphonic romantic comfort food of Dvorak's Symphony No. 7, a solid opportunity for the orchestra to demonstrate its considerable wares. The violins hit a few rough spots, but largely, the performance was a rousing and expressive one, and those weary of Dvorak were at least thankful that we weren't subjected to yet another encounter with his hit, the "New World Symphony."

Overall, the Santa Barbara Symphony's program gave further reason to expect that the decision-making process won't be an easy one once it comes time to pick the new conductor.


News-Press
Santa Barbara, California
November 2005
By JOSEF WOODARD



Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1


I am glad I don't have to choose the symphony's new music director. Each of the candidates has been fantastic, and Daniel Meyer is no exception. The orchestra performed beautifully for him.

Meyer's program was like the title of a book by Jacques Barzun: Classic, Romantic, and Modern. The classical part was an exhilarating reading of the overture to Mozart's Don Giovanni. A nice curtain-raiser, but it is so linked to the opera that when Leporello doesn't immediately stride out to sing "Notte e giorno faticar ...," one becomes disoriented.

We then skipped ahead to the modern-Shostakovich's first Cello Concerto-a brilliant and, like all Shostakovich, an inherently dramatic piece. No matter how good a recording one owns of this work, it is a completely different composition when heard live. Zuill Bailey was perhaps even more sensitive to the lyrical possibilities of the music than Rostropovich, who played the premiere, and for whom it was written. With exquisitely nuanced support from Meyer and the orchestra, he held us spellbound from the first four notes. The cellis