Sunday, September 27, 2009 RVSO conducting candidate brings down the house in tryout, by Bill Varble

Chelsea Tipton II on Friday night in Ashland turned what was supposed to be an audition into something more like a triumph. Competing for the job of conductor and music director of the Rogue Valley Symphony, Tipton led the orchestra and guest artist and pianist Roberto Plano through a sweet, passionate turn at Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. Five, the "Emperor," then returned after the intermission to blow the doors off with a towering performance of Berlioz' "Symphonie Fantastique." "I know there are four more (guest conductors) coming, but as far as I'm concerned they could call it right now," one patron said at intermission to a chorus of hear-hears. In what RVSO officials are calling "The Year of the Search," five conductors from around the nation have been invited to conduct one concert series each during the 2009-2010 season, each show featuring a program chosen by the RVSO. One of the conductors is to be offered the job, succeeding Arthur Shaw, who retired earlier this year. The Beethoven-Berlioz concert was presented Friday in Southern Oregon University's Music Recital Hall. It was repeated Saturday at the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater in Medford, and will have its final performance at 3 p.m. today at the High School Performing Arts Center, 830 N.E. Ninth St., Grants Pass. The Beethoven concerto, now just a year short of its 200th anniversary, began with those big orchestral chords, each followed by a short cadenza on the piano. Then Plano gave a lively reading of the long piano introduction. Plano, who lives near Milan, has performed with orchestras in Europe and elsewhere and recorded works by Chopin, Liszt and Scriabin. His international career was launched when he won the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2001. He played with fluidity, passion and an unaffected boyishness, sometimes allowing his arms to fly off the keyboard at the end of an intricate passage and leaning back a moment almost like a prizefighter finding respite in a clinch. After a sometimes thunderous first movement that's fully half the concerto, he delivered the second with gentle poetry. When the orchestra moved into the third movement via a simple note on the bassoon, Plano repeated the main theme, more urgently, and the orchestra resumed the conversation. Plano's playing is lithe and precise and keyed to musical depths beneath the flash.