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Pittsburg (PA) TRIBUNE-REVIEW Monday, Oct. 9, 2000

WSO, Biegel
open season on high note

By Jeff Yoders
TRIBUNE-REVIEW

Pianist Jeffrey Biegel helped the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra open its 2000-01 season with a figurative bang Saturday and Sunday.

Biegel was the highlight of the opening concerts that featured a combination of classics and pops that Review showcased the diverse talents of the symphony's musicians. Conductor and Director Kypros Markou chose a program that included Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" and Chopin's "Grande Polonaise," which not only showed the strengths of Biegel's piano work but also the WSO's own powerful brass and clarinet sections, instruments that could easily be missed in a mostly piano concert.

Biegel's work was stunning yesterday, from the deft movements of his overpowering left hand on "Grande Polonaise" to his interplay with the symphony on Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's "Millennium Fantasy." Biegel, 39, of Long Island, N.Y., is best known for his 1997 performance of the fully restored original 1924 manuscript of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," and he did include some Gershwin in his encore performance. Biegel, who has studied at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, was most impressive playing Chopin's solo piece but he still towered over the WSO when playing with accompaniment.

Jeffrey Biegel As for the Biegel-less music, the Symphony showed much of the same fine form of last season. All the new members were right in line with concertmaster Warren Davidson's violin and principal trumpet David Anderson played well in the seat previously held by Steve Groba. The brass and percussion stood out particularly well on Ottorino Respighi's "The Pines of Rome," which takes the audience on a musical journey from the Villa Borghese to a spooky catacomb and finally to a march in the Appian Way. An interesting trick the WSO employed was putting the horn, trumpet and trombone players in the Palace's opera boxes to create the feel of a Roman street lined with horn-playing centurions. It was effective. The opera boxes could be a great place for this kind of focused music in future shows. Principal clarinet Marianne Hapeman also performed beautiful solos on "The Pines of Rome," particularly in the "The Pines of Janiculum," the third part of the piece. The WSO has been performing with some of the world's finest pianists for the past two seasons, but Biegel's performance was head and shoulders above all his contemporaries last weekend.