From U-Md. Students, an Aural Treat

French horns of the U-Md. Symphonic Wind Ensemble. (Clarice Smith Center)

The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center offered a heck of a deal Tuesday night: two student groups, led by four student conductors, in performances ranging from pretty good to outstanding, for the low, low price of zero dollars.

The performance featured the University of Maryland Symphonic Wind Ensemble and the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra. Their rendition of Alban Berg's Violin Concerto would have been a bargain at any price. Jun-Young Park, the soloist, played it as one long, transfixing meditation, each melodic thought inspiring the next, with a spontaneity born of deep understanding of the music. She could have showed off and played louder in a few virtuoso passages -- her technique surely would have allowed it. But many more times, Park's inward concentration made her playing all the more magnetic, especially with the sweet, silvery tone she commanded throughout.

Daniel Walshaw led the combined forces in a true collaboration with Park, drawing lucid, finely judged playing from the orchestra and winds. And Daniel Chetel conducted the groups in a well-shaped, appropriately blissful rendition of Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll."

Handel's "Music for the Royal Fireworks" got a rare public airing from the winds, as conductor Marc Boensel led the ensemble through some initial rough patches in a crisply paced performance that still packed plenty of ordnance. And though In-Young Moon could have used a lighter touch at times in Brahms's Serenade No. 2 in A, the glowing sonorities she drew from the winds and strings, perfectly evoking Brahms's rare relaxed mood, were more than adequate compensation.

-- Andrew Lindemann Malone