This week in the IU Jacobs School of Music

An enthusiastically large crowd gathered in the warmth of the Musical Arts Center Wednesday evening to hear the IU Philharmonic Orchestra launch the spring semester orchestra series with a program of Russian repertoire.\nThe concert opened with a performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Fourth Piano Concerto, featuring graduate student Adam Zukiewicz, of Wroclaw, Poland, as piano soloist. \nTall and slender, Zuckiewicz treated the piece and his instrument with great respect. He made a fitting display of his impressive technical proficiency and delicate refinement, giving the concerto a deeply pensive interpretation. It was just a shame the concerto itself, rather short and academic, could not manage to match the level of musicianship applied to it. \nThe piece is not often performed in the United States and it's not very hard to see why. It allows a reasonable amount of showcase material for the soloist (as concerti are meant to do) and possesses some acceptably dramatic moments. But it is, in the end, dry and unfulfilling.\nWith the night off to such an ambivalent start, I found myself worried that the Stravinsky, next on the program, would feel similarly stilted and not quite fully engaged. Then, of course, I remembered what I'm ashamed to have forgotten in the first place -- that there really is no such thing as a half-assed "Rite of Spring." It is truly an all-or-nothing, sink-or-swim, every-other-tired-metaphor-you-can-think-of kind of venture. \nAnd from the first, infamous bassoon notes to the final, explosive deathblow, the work was attacked with breathtaking passion, concentration, and ferocity. There was an incredible show of effort from the strings, particularly the chronically undervalued violas, and the brass most definitely achieved that all-important balance between power and restraint. \nMaestro David Effron, always an exciting figure on the podium, elicited from the student orchestra a fantastic and courageous performance of this notoriously challenging piece, and they all should feel incredibly proud. \nA quick word on concert etiquette before closing: When you're attending a concert and you find yourself on the left side of the hall when you want to be on the right, please, I beg of you, do not then proceed to traipse yourself down one side, across the front row in front of God and everybody, and then up the other side to your seat the way some feckless idiot did Wednesday night. \nYou may have blunt objects flung at you. And you will deserve it.