Danail Rachev, the orchestra's new assistant conductor, made his debut with the ensemble. Rachev comes most recently from the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and since the staff conductors in Philadelphia have become the orchestra's workhorses, you probably will be seeing plenty of him.
A complete personality portrait isn't possible to draw from a concert of this kind - a one-hour appearance in which the conductor has to accommodate actors and gags, plus the special needs of a student competition winner. But the student, it turns out, needed no special attention.
Vicki Powell, who was 19 when she won the Greenfield Competition's senior-division title in February, is a student of Roberto Diaz at the Curtis Institute of Music, and she shares with her teacher many of the sensibilities he brought to the orchestra before stepping down as principal violist.
On this morning, in the opening movement from the Stamitz Viola Concerto in D Major, Powell was a fully formed artist. She has a sound that is refined, but that has no trouble projecting. She has none of the tension in her playing that many young string players bring while simply trying to get the notes down. She has them down, and she spins them out with a coolness (not to mention poise) that is remarkable at any age.
The music is vaguely Mozartian, though with the workout of an etude, raising the question of what she could do with something more expressively sophisticated - say, the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante.
The orchestra announced the signing of Rachev in December, saying his duties would extend for at least 12 weeks each season. He is expected to lead family, outreach and educational concerts.
Rachev has said he is inspired by the success of his fellow Bulgarian, Rossen Milanov, the orchestra's associate conductor. When he auditioned last fall, Rachev said he had never worked with an orchestra on the level of Philadelphia's before. He did excerpts of Brahms Symphony No. 3 and Mozart's overture to The Magic Flute.
