Athayde & Scheherezade

dougoconnor — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 05:23:30 +0000

Just this past Friday I was driving back from Canandaigua (after teaching lessons with Hochstein School), and on classical WXXI radio was Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade. I’ve heard the piece many times (which is either a good or a bad thing), but this was a particularly good recording. I would have guessed that it was the Cleveland Philharmonic, or one of the better Canadian orchestras, in fact, and the violin soloist in the final movement was simply incredible, the best rendering of those solos that I’ve heard on any recording of the piece. For sure, a top-15 North American orchestra, yes?

As it turns out, she was Juliana Athayde, concertmaster of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and it was a live concert of the RPO playing that evening. My assumptions that the RPO was simply a very good minor league orchestra were really put on the spot! It’s stock repertoire, sure, but to truly own it that well is still extremely impressive. Again, the violin soloist made the performance for me, her playing was so communicative that I forgot that she was even playing an instrument.

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Athayde & Scheherezade