CAPE MAY — As with past years, the Cape May Music Festival 1995 edition is a gala celebration of great music, and on Wednesday, May 31 we were fortunate enough to witness a fantastic performance of Piotr Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D and the Mozart Symphony No. 39 in E flat.

The featured soloist in the Tchaikovsky concerto was violin virtuoso Maria Bachmann, with Stephen Rogers Radcliffe and the Cape May Festival Orchestra.

Ms. Bachmann is about to hit the big time of concert artists by virtue of a management contract with Columbia Artists and has been recommended by Leonard Slatkin, conductor of the National Symphony in Washington D.C.

She has performed with the South Jersey Symphony and the Bridgeton Symphony, but will now enter a new high-profile phase of her career.

The Tchaikovsky concerto evokes mental pictures of the majesty of czarist Russia contrasted with the wildly energetic gyrations of peasant dancing.

Anyone cognizant of Slavic culture finds the elegance and vigor of the music entrancing; anyone familiar with great violin masterpieces knows that this concerto is no exercise for beginners.

The concerto had to run a fierce gauntlet of fault finding when it was introduced in 1881 by the Vienna Philharmonic with Adolf Brodsky as soloist and Hans Richter on the podium. It was butchered by critic Eduard Hanslick and even Tchaikovsky’s patroness Nadezda von Meck was highly critical of the first movement. Some violinists of the day called it unplayable, but even with its minefield of difficult passages, it is only second to the Mendelssohn concerto in popularity with violinists and audiences today. Time has given Tchaikovsky his revenge.

The Cape May Festival Orchestra has the discipline, economy and responsiveness to Radcliffe’s excellent conducting to bring off even the uneven tempo of the scherzo movement of the Brahms and later to be equally effective in Tchaikovsky and Mozart.

Stephen Rogers Radcliffe’s cohorts did a magnificent job on the Variations complex score. Brahms probably wrote some of his best for woodwinds and that section of the orchestra often provides the identifying Brahms sound.

The Cape May Festival Orchestra has the discipline, economy and responsiveness to Radcliffe’s excellent conducting to bring off even the uneven tempo of the scherzo movement of the Brahms and later to be equally effective in Tchaikovsky and Mozart.

Maria Bachmann’s association with Columbia Artists began at midnight after her bravura performance of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto was completed with a flair and strength that seemed phenomenal for one so slightly built. She is a powerful performer and her opening statement of the initial theme informed the audience that she was not a lightweight by any measure.

There was a perfect amalgam between her and the orchestra; the only disappointment for us was a slight letdown in the second movement of the concerto. In the finale (a wild dance), Bachmann was ready to join the ranks of Szigeti, Morini and other female violinists who give the boys a run for their money.

Radcliffe’s reading of the Mozart symphony was right on the money and the final allegro echoed the good-humored portions of the film Amadeus.

We believe the 33-piece orchestra of incredibly gifted young musicians is the best the festival has ever assembled. Personnel changes from year to year are inevitable but there seems to be an unending supply of accomplished youngsters forthcoming annually from conservatories.

We hope that they continue to find steady employment in the field that they obviously love.

— Ed Wismer