Music review: IU philharmonic
Young conductor a hit with musicians, audience

From El Paso, Texas, and Spartanburg, S.C., of all places, came Sarah Ioannides Wednesday evening to lead the IU Philharmonic in its early spring concert at the Musical Arts Center. The young conductor serves as music director of the orchestras in both those cities, where music fans must consider themselves fortunate. She’s quite the talent.

The Philharmonic played up a storm for her in a program of challenge: a pair of acknowledged 20th century masterpieces, Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra and the Shostakovich Cello Concerto Number 1, plus a brief and brash opener called “Network,” written in 1997 by the current composer-in-residence at the Fort Worth Symphony, Kevin Puts.

The Cello Concerto came midway but deserves special note because of the evening’s soloist, the Taiwanese born Ying-Chi Tang, who did some breathtaking work in the performance of it. Whether in raw and driving moments that break forth time and again or in the haunting lyricism of the second movement, the Moderato, or in the fleeting passages that dominate the close, Tang revealed both technical and tonal mastery. So, one should add, did Timothy Huizenga in realizing the critical and complementing French horn solo during the Moderato. Throughout the concerto, Ioannides and the orchestra faithfully served to complete the proceedings, thereby giving the whole of the reading a refulgent finish.

“Network” proved suggestive of its title. It was all babble and buzz, clock ticks and clangor, like the outpouring from an electronic labyrinth. The conductor negotiated the orchestra dexterously through the maze.

And that certainly was true in the Bartok, which calls for high levels of instrumental athleticism, collective and solo. Ioannides drew gobs of sound from her ensemble, but always in the right dosages and with clear distinctions marking the various units of the orchestra. Not only were the climaxes formidably present but so, too, the nuances built into this remarkably fertile piece. As for the contrasting and shifting rhythms, they were handled in whiplash fashion and emerged exactingly, laudably precise.

The musicians seemed comfortable with Ioannides, and she with them. The combination worked. A fine concert was the result.

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The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music would like
to thank the Herald Times for permission to republish this review.