Violinist gives piece its due with warmth

Most soloists, when prompted by an appreciative audience to perform an encore, choose something in a different style from the piece they just played. And violinist Randall Goosby was no exception Saturday night at the Maumelle Performing Arts Center.

Except that it’s rare that the encore, Niccolo Paganini’s 24th Caprice, is flashier than the concerto, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5, nicknamed “Turkish.”

Goosby, 18 (pretty close to the age Mozart was when he wrote it), gave the piece a warm and nicely toned performance with the Arkansas Symphony with guest conductor Vladimir Verbitsky, music director of the Voronezh Philharmonic, on the podium.

Goosby, dressed like a high-school kid at a rehearsal in white shirt and black pants (no tie, no tux), was totally comfortable throughout and concentrated more on giving the music its due — how rare! — than on displays of technique.

The Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky part of the “Tchaikovsky and Mozart Festival” was Verbitsky’s very Russian reading of his Symphony No. 4, the first movement of which he took about as fast as the players could play it and the finale with just the right amount of flash and fire. The “Polonaise” from Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin was a rousing curtain-raiser.

Goosby, Verbitsky and the orchestra will repeat it all at 3 p.m. today at the Performing Arts Center, Maumelle High School, 100 Victory Lane, Maumelle. Ticket information is available by calling (501) 666-1761, Ext. 100, or online at ArkansasSymphony.org.