“’Music for Wind Instruments’ was the New World Players Chamber Orchestra’s program on Saturday, but a keyboard player was the evening’s star. Playing the piano solo in Janacek’s Capriccio, with Stephen Robert Kleiman conducting, Ann Schein shone at the National Academy of Sciences. Part Slavic mourning, part digital gymnastics, the Janacek ranks with Ravel’s daunting Concerto in left-handed piano literature. In the give and take between piano and orchestra…Janacek demands hairpin turns, abrupt shifts from fire to ice (Schein sometimes resembling someone playing on a hot bed of coals). There are also contrasting moments of gentle lyricism. Displaying impressive dexterity…Schein caught completely the music’s spirit and emotion.”

Washington, D.C.