San Francisco Classical Voice

The afternoon's program contained two demanding orchestral works that can challenge even professional groups. It was well performed by what is, in the final analysis, a bunch of high school kids.

Leonard Bernstein's music for Jerome Robbins' ballet, Fancy Free, opened the first half of the concert. This is music for which today's teenagers should, in principle, have no affinity whatsoever. One could even argue that it was already on its way to being old-fashioned, ricky-tick jazz by 1960. Yet these talented young men and women tore into the piece — the entire ballet mind you, not excerpts from it — as if the girls were wearing poodle skirts and the boys had DA haircuts. How did they know how to play this late 1940s jazz with such stylistic accuracy? I've heard professional European orchestras fall all over the floor with the demands of the work's trendy, faddish, and rhythmic peculiarities. Yet the kids from Cupertino ate it for lunch.

The Bernstein was followed by a work that is unfortunately being heard less and less as its composer goes out of favor. Paul Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber was originally conceived of as an American ballet by the choreographer Leonide Massine. But artistic disagreements brought the project to an end causing Hindemith to refashion the work as an orchestral suite. It is one of the more difficult works in the contemporary orchestral repertoire, particularly the final movement's march, as choice as anything by John Philip Sousa but considerably more demanding.

However, while the orchestra played the work well, the youth and lack of experience of the players became apparent, particularly in loud passages. The brass was too strong, overbalancing the other sections. I suppose if you put a trumpet part that says, "fortississimo" in the hands of a 16 year old, it is going to be hard to control the situation. The fact that they used six trombones — twice the required number — didn't help either. Still, to have brought the work off at all, with such rhythmic accuracy, was a significant accomplishment in itself.

For the Brahms concerto, soloist Paremski appeared in a marvelous burgundy gown. It was not an old lady's dress, either. It made her look like what she is, a young person only two years into being a teenager.

And can she play! Technique to burn, magic hands, solid rhythmic control, sensitive pedaling, mature stage presence, a real feeling for lush romantic music, the ability to handle blazingly rapid passagework, beautifully executed trills, and all made to look very easy and completely professional by displaying no excessive, unnecessary, or irrelevant body mannerisms.

Paremski plays best when the music requires a light touch, her hands flying over the keys, but less so in passages that demand that she physically overpower the instrument. The lighter parts of the concerto's final movement are a case in point. She ate them alive, her hands blurring with speed, but when the work demanded physical strength, I sensed that she was not yet able to steamroll the instrument. What kept flashing through my mind was that she may not be physically ready for the demands of Brahms 2. I thought about some 25-year-old women who sang Wozzeck and Lulu years before they were ready, and then disappeared into the wilderness of great talents who were unwisely given opportunities before they were ready for them.

I don't know what else beyond the big romantic piano pieces is in Paremski's repertoire. She began her training in Russia and is now (or was) a pupil of two great artists and pedagogues, Earl Wild and Oxana Yablonskaya. This causes one to conclude that both by culture and education, she focuses almost exclusively on the large scale concerti; i.e., Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, etc. But I do hope that her studies also include the Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Chopin concerti in the book of things to which she can bring her talents. Her feather-light hands suggest that she might be magnificent in the classic and early romantic literature. The fact that she has played with a number of youth orchestras is a very positive statement and shows intelligent guidance to her personal as well as her career needs. As a young woman it is wise to involve her musically with young people.

Musically she is ready for just about anything, but physically, she is a slip of a girl and I am not sure if she is ready to win a wrestling match with a nine-foot Steinway, lid off.