By Tim Smith
The Baltimore Sun,  February 20, 2007

... All evening, the connection between podium and orchestra was as effortless as it was galvanizing and rewarding.

Much the same could be said about Saturday night's performance by the orchestral/choral Concert Artists of Baltimore, led by imaginative artistic director Edward Polochick at the Gordon Center for Performing Arts in Owings Mills.

Polochick inspires a level of intense involvement from his instrumentalists and singers that many a conductor would envy. That's how it was on this occasion.

Not that everything emerged with pinpoint accuracy; various little details could have been cleaner, clearer. What mattered was the continual beauty and thoughtfulness of expression.

The clever program looked at 20th-century English and Russian composers with (stylistically) romantic tendencies.

Frank Bridge's Suite for String Orchestra, full of Constable-pretty skies and meadows, received a lovely performance, characterized by dynamic subtleties and warmhearted phrasing.

Polochick had his chorus singing sensitively in Vaughan Williams' Mass in G minor, an a cappella piece from 1921 that manages to keep one foot in the Middle Ages.

Rachmaninoff's achingly beautiful Vocalise did not entirely fit soprano Christine Kavanagh, but she spun out some silvery phrases, with eloquent support from the strings.

The Piano Concerto No. 1 by Shostakovich (really a concerto for piano, trumpet and strings) ingeniously fuses lyricism, irony, wit and just plain nose-thumbing. Pianist Brian Ganz charged into this volatile mix with remarkable elan, making the music seem thoroughly spontaneous and inevitable.

His bravura performance was potently complemented by the assured, colorful playing of trumpeter Phil Snedecor.

Polochick's seamless dovetailing of all the concerto's elements helped to produce a taut, nearly flammable performance.