Concert review: PSO offers winning Glass, Beethoven
By Elizabeth Bloom
One of the great advocates of music by Philip Glass is the violinist Tim Fain, who has worked closely with the composer and performed his music widely. So when you program a Glass violin concerto — as the Pittsburgh Symphony, conducted by Christopher Konig, did Friday night at Heinz Hall — you can’t do much better than tasking Mr. Fain with its interpretation. His assignment was Glass’ Violin Concerto No. 2, “The American Four Seasons,” a 2009 update of Vivaldi’s namesake concerti. Before Friday, the PSO had never played a Glass piece on its classical subscription series.
In his PSO debut, Mr. Fain offered the piece’s almost Romantic melodies with a mellow, ribbon-like tone. His quiet, unsentimental take on the main theme of the second movement carried that melody like a breeze. A heaving vibrato closed the movement, puncturing its early triumph with sobs. With a quicksilver bow arm, the violinist offered equal facility in the rollicking syncopation of the finale, which seemed to elicit the verdant fertility of spring.
Read the full review here