Moscow Virtuoisi Perform Ballet Music

[Helene]

Tonight Moscow Virtuoisi performed in Seattle, and two of the four pieces were used for two of the greatest ballets, Tchaikovsky's "Serenade in C major for Strings" for Serenade, and Schönberg's "Verklärte Nacht" for Tudor's Pillar of Fire. The opening of "Serenade for Strings" was too quick to convey the magic of Balanchine's opening for the ballet, but like all of the pieces on the program, including Mozart's 2nd Violin Concerto, played brilliantly by conductor and founder Vladimir Spivakov, and Mozart's "Symphony No. 24," danced from beginning to end.

The orchestra was so attuned to every one of Spivakov's gestures and had such seamless dynamic range that I now understand the purely visceral attraction people describe when they talk about the responsiveness of high performance cars.