Perlman's greatness exhibited in premiere

CLEARWATER - The stars were in alignment for the premiere of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Episodes for violin and piano. The great violinist Itzhak Perlman, for whom Zwilich wrote the work, was the soloist, with Rohan de Silva at the piano. A crowd of 2,002 was on hand to hear it at Ruth Eckerd Hall on Saturday night.

Perlman's giving the first performance was a coup because, for all his eminence, the violinist hasn't played a lot of premieres. That the piece was by Zwilich, a Pulitzer Prize winner and the most distinguished living composer with Florida roots, having been raised in Coral Gables and trained at Florida State University, made the concert an auspicious occasion.

Episodes, a two-movement work, was commissioned by Ray and Nancy Murray of Clearwater, along with funding from the Florida Arts Council, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the newly renovated Ruth Eckerd Hall.

Zwilich, a onetime symphony orchestra violinist, has said that Perlman's rich, singing sound inspired the first movement, a kind of aria for the instrument, starting with keening upper-register passages played with tender sweetness. The movement is not just glossy display of tone and color; in the last few measures, the violin suddenly drops an octave or more and takes on a darkness, leaving a melancholy impression.

Episodes, basically a tonal work, is a descendent of Bach's Partitas for violin, which were drawn from song and dance. The work's second movement has a jumpy, driving pulse, perfect for Perlman's rollicking sense of rhythm. De Silva hung on for dear life in the pell-mell piano part. It was a tremendously exciting performance of a satisfying piece.

Zwilich said a few words from the stage afterward, praising Perlman for his "hair-raising" technique, and then the violinist did an excellent thing. He and de Silva played Episodes, which runs about 12 minutes, one more time. They gave it stronger dynamic force and brought out the drama of the first movement.

The premiere followed intermission and fit in well with the pair of violin standards that preceded it. The program opened with a work by another composer-violinist, Jean-Marie Le Clair, a Frenchman who was the subject of one of classical music's enduring mysteries: his death in 1764 in Paris at the hand of an unknown murderer. Le Clair was prolific, writing 48 violin sonatas, one of which Perlman performed, a D major work that showed off the violinist's mastery. Beethoven's Spring Sonata featured wonderfully emphatic exchanges between Perlman and de Silva.

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