After two weeks away from home, many of the musicians were ready to leave Paris behind after today's concert. Many, but not all: some are staying a day or two longer to sightsee in Paris, or visit relatives in other countries. Still, orchestra duties at home beckon: a children's concert is coming up.

Today's concert at the Cité de la Musique was, for some, the culmination of the tour. For most of the tour's dates, the orchestra played one of two programs. You'll find them listed in the itinerary. Such a limited repertoire has pluses and minuses. On the one hand, the musicians' confidence with this music reaches a peak. On the other, there might be some danger of overconfidence or tedium.

These are utterly confident and competent players who can sight-read music better than some can play after extensive practice, but any musician grows in confidence as he or she plays a work more. Every note, every nuance, becomes engraved in the mind.

All the concerts on this tour were outstanding work. But to my ears, the Beethoven and Stravinsky they played in Valencia shone the brightest. They sounded utterly relaxed, yet precise. The instruments, the musical ideas, and the players all seemed to fuse. On the other hand, many orchestra members felt that the Barcelona concert was their peak. And the standing ovation for these two works in Paris's Pleyel Hall must have been deeply satisfying.

If by this point in the tour the orchestra had grown weary of Beethoven, Stravinsky, Schnittke, Bartok, Schubert, Dvorak, Prokofiev and Wagner, they never gave any sign of it. Nor were there perceptible weaknesses in today's European premiere of the Ives Emerson Concerto, with Alan Feinberg.

Make no mistake, this is a piece that challenges the listener. Ives's music is often rocky, but among those rocks can be found clear water for those who take the time to look and listen closely. Time will rate the Emerson Concerto relative to Ives's catalog and to other works of our century. However, if not for the efforts of Ives authority David Porter, who assembled the fragments into a whole, and of Feinberg, who championed the work, this music might not have had the chance to be judged.

Feinberg gave it a visceral traversal today. Seldom does one see a soloist who hasn't memorized his part, but that was the case with this pianist and this work. To be fair, though, the Emerson Concerto is a recent restoration. Its complexity might well make a performer wish for the notes in front of him.

In this piece, Ives suggested that the piano represents Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the orchestra his listeners. They were clearly listening to each other today. The audience gave the piece a warm reception.

After the premiere, the orchestra gave one more performance of the Schubert Ninth. The sunny disposition of this symphony seemed to warm up the Cité's curiously open but somewhat sonically cool hall with its oval upper section. The bravos and rhythmic clapping qualified the audience for two encores, the Wagner Meistersinger Overture and a swift Prokofiev Classical Symphony finale.

Over the next few days, the suitcases will empty and the jet lag subside. But for most, the memories of this trip will remain.

David Roden
WKSU Assistant Program Director