Chooi, Highland Park Strings, illuminate Tchaikovsky

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Nikki Chooi

Updated: January 20, 2012 11:18AM

“What a gem you have here,” said Dr. Robert G. Hasty, who had stepped up in less than a week’s notice as a substitute for the Highland Park Strings’ conductor Francesco Milioto, who was ailing. He was on the podium at Elm Place School in Highland Park, addressing a packed house just before intermission the afternoon of Dec. 11. He had completed the first half of an all-Tchaikovsky program and was full of admiration for the volunteer group now in its 33rd season of presenting free classical music concerts.

This reviewer only heard the second half of the program, but what a pleasure it was in every way! Multiple award-winning soloist Nikki Chooi, a student at the Curtis Institute of Music, played Tchaikovsky’s Concerto for Violin in D and he illuminated that masterpiece.

His instrument is a Guarneri del Gesu, which is important only to the extent that he is the master of it, and that he is. Chooi drew from it a sweet, endearing tone, worthy of the composer who stands as one of the great masters of melody. Make no mistake, all is not sweetness in this work. It is a challenging concerto that was initially rejected by no less than Leopold Auer, the great Hungarian violinist and stern teacher of such violin superstars as Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein and Efrem Zimbalist. He later, however, became its foremost proponent.

The Canadian-born soloist performed a very deliberate cadenza, with care and clarity, maintaining concentration when a child’s voice was briefly heard. The conductor, associate director of orchestra at Northwestern University’s School of Music, guided the orchestra to a seamless end of the first movement, which was greeted with energetic applause — just as the composer surely intended!

The Andante movement has an ethereal quality, propelled by a powerful melody articulated not only by the soloist and strings, but also by silvery flutes, excellent horns and graceful woodwinds, calling to mind the composer’s other music, specifically his score for “The Nutcracker.”

In a flash the Allegro vivacissimo arrived with the young man flying confidently through the dazzling passages. The conclusion was fierce, even stunning — ensemble and soloist meshing to secure a brilliant finale.

Remember the name Nikki Chooi and that he played with the Highland Park Strings one December afternoon in 2011.

N.B. Strings’ concertmaster Aurelien Pederzoli was playing on a Guarneri violin, loaned to him for this concert by former Chicago Symphony Orchestra violinist Francis Akos, who conducted the Highland Park Strings for 29 years and was in attendance at the concert.