Solzhenitsyn's farewell

When the Concerto Soloists Chamber Orchestra began looking to chase away institutional malaise more than 15 years ago, it turned to a Curtis Institute of Music student who happened to be the son of one of the most influential political writers of the 20th century.

Ignat Solzhenitsyn was still studying piano and conducting at Curtis when Marc Mostovoy began folding him into the ensemble Mostovoy had founded in 1964.

After a succession of junior titles, Solzhenitsyn became principal conductor in 1994 and music director in 2004. Through the group's name change and move to the Kimmel Center, he has evolved the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia into something only barely resembling what it was in the days of being curiously committed to conductorless concerts and the unearthing of second-rate composers. The playing is more spirited, and so is Solzhenitsyn.

Still, the Moscow-born conductor is moving on. His concerts Sunday and yesterday were his last as music director, though he'll be back "at least once a season," as he told Sunday's audience at the Kimmel's Perelman Theater. Belgian conductor Dirk Brossé takes over in the fall, and in several ways this final statement showed both Solzhenitsyn's strengths and the considerable work Brossé has ahead of him if this orchestra is to find a convincing niche.

The program itself pointed to the challenge of differentiation in a crowded musical marketplace. With its move into the Kimmel, which opened in 2001, the Chamber Orchestra embraced mainstream repertoire with big-name soloists. But if you wanted to hear the Brahms Violin Concerto or the Serenade No. 1 in D major, there's another, better orchestra just across the Kimmel plaza with the same offerings. Janine Jansen played the concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra in February, and about the same time the orchestra released its Sawallisch recording of the Serenade.

You could make the argument that the Chamber Orchestra, with fewer players, offers textural transparency more appropriate to certain repertoire - except the Philadelphia Orchestra is doing that, too: When Andrew Davis led Mozart last week, he pared it down to a few dozen.

Lower ticket prices? A more intimate venue? The Chamber Orchestra might win on the first point, but on the second there are so many drawbacks to hearing an orchestra in the 650-seat Perelman that a gain in proximity is hardly worthy, at least in the configuration heard Sunday. The stage was in the shallow, chamber music position (rather than the deep-stage theater setting, which could be more viable with an orchestra shell), so the horns and timpani bullied the rest of the ensemble. Timpanist Martha Hitchins could not know, but her sound smothered important string lines in the Serenade, and it wasn't until the very end that Solzhenitsyn gestured her down a notch.

Violinist Soovin Kim (who has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra) was soloist in the Brahms concerto, and hearing him perched at the front of the stage, only about 25 feet from where I sat, was no doubt a more involving experience than generally available in Verizon Hall. Still, I wondered whether he was adjusting his projection accordingly. Kim lacked an intensity in his playing I didn't remember, and he was technically challenged in spots. And so, you had to ask, Why this piece? Why now?

Solzhenitsyn offered no help. As the son of Nobel Prize-winning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the conductor has often been greeted by audiences, fairly or unfairly, as a musical intellectual. He introduced the program with a lengthy explanation starting with something about how the "ancients" had many fears, including solar eclipses, and ending with Brahms. I'm not among those who will miss these discursive curtain speeches, though many no doubt are charmed by them.

Programs must rise or fall on the merits of interpretation, especially with repertoire as common as these two pieces. The Serenade had its moments, though it was significant to hear this partnership be as shaky as it was in spots this late in the day.

Instructive moments:

Solzhenitsyn took the first repeat in the first movement, and, because the second time around was so much more confident than the first, you had to think a 12-year-old partnership should exhibit a more immediate rapport.

In the second movement, it's a fine effect to slow down the tempo at points, like a music box that needs rewinding. But when the tempo starts up again, the ensemble needs to start, person for person, at the same tempo.

One of the opportunities for this orchestra to distinguish itself from others is through the individuality of the playing; in the soulful third movement, Solzhenitsyn didn't encourage risk-taking or allow for moments of personal expression.

The encore seemed significant. Solzhenitsyn repeated the fourth movement, whose middle "menuetto" pointed to subtle manipulations in tempo. These are the important emotional inflections that span the distance between prosaic and poetic - the realm of the artist we'll be listening for in Solzhenitsyn's post-valedictory visits.