CAPE MAY — The large audience attending the Cape May Music Festival concert on Thursday, May 31 got more than their money’s worth.

The lengthy list of goodies the music lovers received includes the Cape May Festival Orchestra in all its glory, under the lively baton of Music Director Stephen Rogers Radcliffe. Then there was the outstanding program the orchestra played and the dazzling piano soloist Fabio Bidini. The musical cornucopia was literally overflowing.

Gioacchino Rossini had a knack for writing frothy and frivolous overtures even for his allegedly tragic operas. In the midst of the crashing about in the orchestra’s percussion section is always a flute sounding like a demented magpie. Thursday night’s opening of the composer’s “Semiramide Overture” was vintage Rossini. Radcliffe gave it a reading worthy of Toscanini or Muti. It was a tooth rattling and percussive tour de force. The French horn quartet early in the piece was played lushly, as was the work of all sections of the orchestra.

Contrasted with Rossini’s bombastic boomer, the Schubert “Symphony No. 8,” or “Unfinished Symphony,” could only be described as tranquil and poetic. Mendelssohn is often described as a composer who never wrote an ugly note, and Schubert could be in the same category. The amount of music he turned out in 31 years, cut short by typhoid fever, is prodigious. His oeuvre amounted to 1,500 pieces. Schubert started to write the Symphony No. 8 when he was 25. He never returned to the project, but he more than earned the right to abandon it considering all the other music he wrote. Radcliffe and the orchestra gave the symphony its due in a haunting rendition that displayed the sonority of the strings and marvelous harmony in the winds.

Bidini’s advance billing called him a passionate pianist, thus qualifying for the understatement of the year.

The Prokofiev concerto is probably one of the most difficult to play in musical literature. It is a deft mixture of melody and dissonance reminiscent of “Rocky IV.” Bidini’s interpretation was a display of manual dexterity that inspired me to depict him with as many hands as a Hindu idol. His dynamic digits were a mere blur.
Artists of Bidini’s caliber are what have made the festival grow in stature and reputation. Although essentially hidden behind the concert grand, Radcliffe was a strong presence. His collaboration with the pianist was exquisite. The symbiotic relationship between the two artists was quite evident. Numerous standing ovations were well earned.