http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/11/arts/belgrade-philharmonic-performs-at-carnegie-hall.html 2014-10-11 01:03:11 Belgrade Philharmonic Performs at Carnegie Hall The Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra concluded its first American tour with a program of Sibelius, Tchaikovsky and more at Carnegie Hall. === You can only imagine how much it meant to the But for the last 10 years, the 96-member orchestra has been steadily rising and winning support at home. One goal of the tour, which included stops in Chicago, Cleveland and North Bethesda, Md., was to raise money, especially from Americans of Serbian heritage, for the construction of a new concert hall. Under What came through the most was the palpable involvement of the musicians. This is a young ensemble, with an average age of under 40. During ovations the players looked elated. Mr. Tang began by conducting first the American and then the Serbian national anthem. For such an important concert, the program was unadventurous. It opened with Tchaikovsky’s “Marche Slave,” the popular 10-minute tone poem. A Russian musical society commissioned Tchaikovsky to write the piece in 1876 during the Serbo-Turkish War, when Russia supported Serbia. The music depicts the strife of Serbs under Turkish rule, the Russians coming to the rescue, and the final triumph of the Slavic people. The performance had sweep and color despite moments of shaky coordination. The Serbian baritone In the Sibelius there were some scrappy passages in the brass and winds, and a lack of careful balancing was a consistent problem. Still, at its best, the performance was full-bodied, sonorous and feisty. For encores, the orchestra played two rousing Serbian works, first “The Legend of Ohrid” by Stevan Hristic, who was the Philharmonic’s first conductor, and then Stanislav Binicki’s “March on Drina,” which had the delighted audience clapping along. When Mr. Tang was studying music in China, could he have imagined that he would one day lead the Belgrade Philharmonic in a definitive account of “March on Drina,” at Carnegie Hall, no less?