Saturday night was our opening concert of the Classical ‘B’ series, and while there were a lot of the ‘B’ team on stage last night, there certainly was ‘A’ caliber playing to be heard. Please allow me to explain. It’s pretty common practice, mostly in the wind and brass sections, for principal players to take one or two works off to rest up for a major work on a program. When that happens, the assistant principal player moves up into the hot seat.
The most prominent example of an assistant stepping up is flutist Alicia DiDonato Paulsen, filling in ever so ably for departed principal David Buck. She has come in and handled the job with seemingly effortless grace, and a sound that I cannot get enough of. She was given an especially well-deserved solo bow after the closing work on last night’s program, Liszt’s fiendish Mephisto Waltz in it’s transcription for orchestra. Assistant principal oboist Karen Wagner, who distinguished herself last week in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, was principal last night for the Mendelssohn Fifth Symphony ‘Reformation’, as well as the Wagner Parsifal first act prelude, and did a great job all evening. And, finally, to round out the wind section shout outs, guest assistant principal Ebonee Thomas played just spectacularly in the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 24 in c minor, as did all of the other wind players in this most concertante of piano concertos. The wind section is sounding just fabulous this year!