Virtuoso violinist to perform at the University of Alabama

Ransom Wilson returned to Tuscaloosa endowed with a mission.

The world-renowned flustist, conductor and educator, born in the Druid City, hired as the Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra's first music director from 1985-1992, before performing and conducting around the globe, and serving as professor of flute at Yale University for more than 30 years, took the Camilla Huxford Endowed Chair in Orchestral Studies at the University of Alabama in the fall 2023 semester.

Key to that chair is conducting the Huxford Symphony Orchestra, an all-student (save for the occasional faculty member called in a pinch) group of between 55 and 60 musicians.

"I was brought in specifically with a mandate to improve the orchestra, make it competitive with other orchestras of its type within 10 years," Wilson said. "That's only 20 semesters, when you think about it, and now we're down to 18.

"So there's no time to waste."

Wilson's curriculum vitae urges students to higher ground, knowing they're working with a private student of Jean-Pierre Rampal; a performer-conductor at home in the Lincoln Center and virtually all other major halls and orchestras since his New York debut in 1976; an artist who can justifiably call Leonard Bernstein, from whom he took private conducting lessons, and with whom he's toured, Lenny; and a three-time Grammy nominee, from three dozen recordings as soloist, chamber musician and conductor.

In related fashion, Wilson brought in his former Julliard compatriot Glenn Dicterow, one of the world's foremost violinists, to perform with the Huxford for a Thursday concert. Dicterow will perform Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto, a movement in three pieces, for the 7:30 p.m. performance in the Moody Concert Hall, on the UA campus. Tickets are $15 general, $10 for seniors, through ua.universitytickets.com.

Though they've known each other since the 1960s, this will mark their first artistic collaboration. Dicterow holds the Jascha Heifetz Chair in violin at the University of Southern California, and an all-time record as concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, for 34 years. At 11, he soloed on Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where father Harold Dicterow served as principal of the second violin section for 52 years.

The younger Dicterow first appeared with the New York Philharmonic at 18, performing the Tchaikovsky. He became concertmaster for the L.A. Philharmonic before turning 25, then moved to the New York orchestra as concertmaster in 1980, soloing annually during each of his 34 years there.

Dicterow has also kept up an active solo performing and recording career. His violin can be heard on Hollywood classics including Brian DePalma's "The Untouchables," with its Grammy-winning score by Ennio Morricone; on the Oscar-nominated score for "Altered States," by John Corigliano; "The Turning Point" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," from 1977; Disney's "Aladdin" from 1992; "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" and "The Great Santini," from 1979; and many more.

Wilson raised the stakes for the orchestra, then doubled down with Dicterow.

"Everybody's a little nervous about Thursday," Wilson said, in a Zoom interview Monday. "Just having somebody like Glenn around, everybody's at the top of their game.

"Nobody wants to disappoint Glenn Dicterow."

Dicterow, who recalled Wilson as a superstar from back in their student days, said they'd fallen out of touch, though kept up with each other's careers.

"Then I got this wonderful email from him, inviting me to, of all places, Tuscaloosa," he said. "I was pleasantly surprised at the level here. The orchestra plays so well, and that takes a conductor as masterful as Ransom.

"The first rehearsal was just about 40 minutes ago" Monday afternoon, Dicterow said, and added, only partly joking, "I don't think we need to rehearse any more."

Although the friends hadn't worked together before, communication went smoothly.

"People I know already, who I have some musical simpatico with, it doesn't take very long to find a shared voice," Wilson said. "When you're actually up there, making music with a soloist, there's no greater pleasure."

Lesser conductors talk too much, Dicterow said, delivering "soliloquies we've heard a million times before."

"Others get up there and do their job, inspire and conduct, with a minimal amount of talking," he said. "It's rare to find a conductor that can get it done with such efficiency and beauty."

The Barber concerto was commissioned by a maker of Fels-Naptha laundry soaps, Wilson said, Samuel Fels, for his violin-playing ward Iso Briselli. But Barber's first two movements felt too conventional, lush and melodic, romantic, and not challenging enough for the ward.

"Mr. Fels liked really gnarly, contemporary music," Wilson said. Barber completed the third movement as almost fiendishly difficult.

"It's in perpetual motion, basically," Dicterow said, aurally dynamic, stark contrast to the earlier movements.

Barber was in danger of losing half of his commission — $500 up front, $500 more on completion ― so the composer asked a student at the Curtis Institute, Herbert Baumel, to study the piece, then prove its playability. Barber received his commission. Albert Spaulding played the public debut in February 1941, with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music, then at Carnegie Hall. It's become standard repertoire, a favorite of virtuosos from Joshua Bell to Itzhak Perlman to Isaac Stern.

"It's one of the great violin concertos, and from day one, people knew it," Wilson said. He'd heard Dicterow's recording, and felt his schoolmate wasn't playing the work as a grandstand for himself, but instead did what the work needs, what the composer intended.

"It's such a romantic piece, it's shameless," Dicterow said.

Thursday's concert will also feature the Huxford performing Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man," a new composition by UA School of Music associate professor of composition Amir Zaheri, and William Grant Still's Symphony No. 4, "Autochthonous."

Reach Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Acclaimed musician to perform in concert at University of Alabama