China National Symphony wows small crowd, finest performance in Las Vegas this season

The China National Symphony Orchestra treated a small but appreciative and enthusiastic audience to what proved to be the finest orchestral performance of the season at Ham Hall on Wednesday. The orchestra, led meticulously and expressively by its principal guest conductor, En Shao, demonstrated delicacy, grace, accuracy, superb training and, when called for, muscle.

The program’s first half consisted of two highly dramatic works by Chinese composers: “Requiem of the Earth” (first movement) by Xia Guan and “Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto” by Zhanhao He and Gang Chen.

The “Requiem” is a tone portrait of human reactions to the deadly earthquake in Sichuan Province in May 2008. This first of three movements portrays mankind “standing in the vast universe, care about every heart without words.” A chorus, which has a major role in the work, was not on tour with the orchestra, but the instrumental writing holds up on its own.

The title “Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto” is probably misleading. The piece is inspired by an ancient Chinese folk legend about a pair of star-crossed lovers whose paths closely parallel those of Romeo and Juliet. The piece was written more than 50 years ago for a western style orchestra with solo violin. Wednesday’s soloist was Chuanyuan Li, a Juilliard product who has studied with the great Dorothy DeLay and with Itzhak Perlman, has soloed with prominent orchestras and has captured major prizes such as the Wianiawski Youth Competition and the Nakamichi Competition in Aspen.

Li’s playing is virtuostic and exciting. His stage presence shows nervous energy and an impatience that says “let’s get on with it.” He paces his area, playing or not, and when the time is his, he demonstrates amazingly agile technique and accuracy.

When the concerto ended to unrestrained audience enthusiasm, Li provided an encore, leaving us breathless with a breakneck performance of a Paganini etude.

The program’s second half consisted of an uncut version of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Symphony No. 2 in E minor.” Perhaps the best-known and best-loved of Rachmaninoff’s works, this performance simply sizzled. Even the orchestra which, in the first half, had played perfectly but, as a group, had shown a certain intractable presence, came alive and began to move, and often smile, to these irresistible melodies.

And what melodies they are; soaring, singing, joyous, and the orchestra never failed to take each phrase somewhere, to move it, which gave the performance a certain musical inevitability.

Conductor En Shao did a masterful job. Not only were cues presented perfectly, but in a manner whose meaning could not be missed — a visual textbook on orchestral conducting. And did I mention he led the program from memory — no score?

What a tribute to players and conductor, since Ham Hall has a reputation for being unkind to orchestral players in that they often have great difficulty hearing each other, which affects balance between players and among sections. There seemed to be no such problems on this occasion.

Earlier we referred to this as the finest orchestral performance of the season. We should have qualified that thought by adding any orchestra, in any venue in the city. And what a shame that so many season ticket holders and potential audience members were elsewhere. Our estimate, confirmed by a staff member, was that fewer than 20 percent of the hall’s 1,832 seats were occupied.

If only they knew what they were missing!