Lakeview Orchestra has a rough and fitfully ready outing with conductor Koo
The Lakeview Orchestra returned to the Athenaeum Theatre in typically admirable form for its first concert of 2025 on Sunday afternoon. On the tail end of a particularly blustery Valentine’s Day weekend, the distinguished nonprofessional orchestra offered up an approachable and appealing program that leaned toward the Romantic, if not overt romance.
Sunday afternoon’s concert marked the Lakeview Orchestra debut for up-and-coming local conductor Nicholas Koo, whose notable engagements in recent years include debuts with the Minnesota Orchestra and San Diego Symphony, as well as an invitation to the Riccardo Muti Italian Opera Academy in Ravenna, Italy.
To open the program, Koo led the orchestra in Lyric for Strings by George Walker, the first African-American composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for music. This gem was composed in 1946 as a movement to a string quartet while the composer was still a graduate student at the Curtis Institute, before being expanded for string orchestra four decades later.
From the piece’s hushed opening strains, the Lakeview strings played with a focused, fine-grained sound. At the outset, Koo’s gestures, though precise, were somewhat stiff and perhaps too subtle, resulting in an expressive inflexibility that muted the overall effect. Ensemble and conductor alike loosened up over the course of the six-minute work, and the swell into the final passage managed to access the pathos that was locked away in the staid opening.
Sufficiently warmed up, the orchestra welcomed violinist Danny Jin to the stage for a memorable reading of Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1. The Korean-born Jin is one of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s newest members, having joined the CSO as assistant principal second violin in 2023.
Jin established his bona fides from the opening lines of the Vorspiel with sweeping arpeggios and brawny double stops in the opening theme. At times, the soloist’s spirited delivery seemed at odds with the orchestra’s tentative opening tempo, yet this discrepancy was compensated by a keen dynamic balance between soloist and orchestra at Koo’s able hand.
The violinist dazzled throughout the concerto, painting Bruch’s broad melodies with a keening lyricism and radiant clarity through the cadenza-like transition into the second movement, the beating heart of the work. Jin brought a velvety warmth to the tender phrases of the Adagio, foregrounding the underlying melody even in the movement’s embellished, technical passages.
Koo and the orchestra matched the soloist’s passion in kind. If Jin exhibited any fault, it was in not exercising even greater restraint to allow the ensemble’s thoughtfully shaped phrases to pull focus.
In the finale, orchestra and soloist alike were lifted by Koo’s well-chosen tempo, and Jin joined forces with the conductor to carry the orchestra through this rustic dance. The Lakeview strings’ articulation was crisper when delivered in consort with the soloist, and the soloist’s rippling stream of triplets rode the swell of the ensemble’s surging accompaniment.
The magic of that synchronicity unfortunately came undone toward the movement’s conclusion, as the accelerando toward the bravura finale didn’t match the momentum evoked by the soloist. The clumsy final moments were hardly enough to deter the enthusiasm of the audience, who immediately met the soloist with a chorus of cheers.
Following intermission, the orchestra delivered a respectable reading of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, the “Pathétique.”
The performance got off to a rocky start, as the first movement was beset by intonation issues and disagreements in tempo through the tempestuous opening. The orchestra cohered at last in the the second pass through the second theme to bring warm, full-bodied expression to the sighing melody.
The stormy development section was similarly handled ably, balancing fiery delivery with technical accuracy. In one of the more effective moments of the first movement, Koo skillfully guided the orchestra through the brooding cadence into a breathless caesura enhanced by a golden-hued clarinet solo by Richard Zili.
The pirouetting melody that opens the second movement was bruised by the overeager cello section, whose dynamic came on too strong even as they passed the theme to the winds. The Allegro con grazia movement was nevertheless dappled with other section highlights, including a lovely chorale from the horns and a mellifluous, latter proclamation of the loping theme by the strings.
Strangely, the performance suffered a tempo and balance disconnect between the wind section and the strings that persisted throughout the work, but became especially evident in the scherzo. Koo offered a corrective to a labored opening by beating strict time, yet one had to crane one’s ear toward the rear of the stage to hear the woodwinds and brass in tutti and soli moments alike.
In a particularly dramatic conclusion to the third movement, Koo’s final baton flourish knocked over the towering microphone stand behind the podium. The audience cried out in alarm as the stand careened earthward—fortunately, saved by the deft intervention of principal cellist Michael Frielich, whose fast reflexes were acknowledged with applause.
The Tchaikovsky concluded well with the Adagio lamentoso. Koo’s reading largely eschewed sentimentalism, opting for sinewy churn over a more plush treatment in the dense opening string figure. The conductor and musicians established a fraught atmosphere that carried through to the work’s growling conclusion.
The Lakeview Orchestra performs works by Price and Dvorak led by conductor Michael Lewanski on April 13. lakevieworchestra.org
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One Response to “Lakeview Orchestra has a rough and fitfully ready outing with conductor Koo”
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Posted Feb 20, 2025 at 11:00 pm by Sam
I find this article quite harsh considering that this is an amateur ensemble. It is written in the point of view of someone who expected a professional-level performance and unduly magnifies the flaws in spite of both conductor and orchestra performing admirably throughout the concert.
The author also should have noted that the winds and brass were visibly further away from the podium and audience compared to the strings, which may have resulted in the disconnect mentioned towards the end of the article.