Grace, elegance mark local violinist's performance
Ted Shaw, Windsor Star
Published: Monday, November 26, 2007

Windsor Symphony looked homeward for its soloist Saturday.
 
Lillian Scheirich, the orchestra's concertmaster, was in the spotlight for a performance of Antonin Dvorak's Romance in F minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 11.
 
This brief but lovely piece was performed with the grace and elegance that mark Scheirich's work in the first chair.
 
Scheirich as a soloist invests her playing with passion, preferring to let the music do its work instead of embellishing things with extravagant gestures.
 
A Windsor native, Scheirich is one of this community's musical treasures. She was a scholarship student at the prestigious Eastman School of Music in New York and was still in her 20s when she was appointed concertmaster of her hometown orchestra.
 
Besides her organizational skills as WSO's principal player, she is also a highly respected teacher at her own studio and at the University of Windsor.
 
Saturday's second of the 2007-08 classics series was dedicated to the big romantics. Besides Dvorak's work which dates from 1873, there were two much larger symphonic pieces -- Johannes Brahms' Serenade in D major No. 1, Op. 11; and Felix Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4, "Italian," Op. 40.
 
The lengthy Serenade is an early work by Brahms, dating from the late-1850s when the composer was just starting to make a name for himself. A sprawling, Beethoven-like composition in six movements, it calls for four french horns.
 
WSO's horn section was bolstered on this occasion with three additional players alongside principal David Haskins, and they were certainly up to the task. Brahms, like his mentor Beethoven, puts a lot of pressure on the horn players to provide the rich, tonal quality of the music.
 
Mendelssohn's shimmering Italian Symphony is from 1833, but it recalls the restraint of the late-18th century's classical period of Mozart in its precise, melodic phrasing.
 
Conductor John Morris Russell again proved himself a master of this grand style by drawing the most from the orchestra.
 
WSO's next performances are Saturday and Sunday when Canadian jazz vocalist Denzal Sinclaire returns in a pops program titled Christmas Magic. Call 519-252-6579 for tickets.
 
© The Windsor Star 2007