Injured Finger Doesn't Slow Striking Nadja

------------ MUSIC REVIEW ------------

The Seattle Symphony Orchestra, with Gerard Schwarz conducting, and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, violin soloist; Opera House, last night and 8 o'clock tonight (443-4747).

Fans of the violin always have known Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg is one of the world's most exciting fiddlers.

But few of us realized she could outplay most of the competition with . . . well, with one finger behind her back.

Strictly speaking, that finger (the pinky finger on her left hand) was right out there with Salerno-Sonnenberg's other digits last night. It was bandaged, however, and scarcely used at all during the violinist's superb performance of the Mendelssohn Concerto; the fingertip was severed and reattached after a close encounter with a sharp kitchen knife last Christmas.

Playing the concerto with only three left-hand fingers is a feat of tremendous versatility and virtuosity. Playing it as well as Salerno-Sonnenberg did last night, at top artistic level, is a feat almost impossible to imagine. Some substantial contortions were required, as other fingers stretched to reach ultra-high notes, and to negotiate double-stops and fast passagework.

Maybe it's because Salerno-Sonnenberg had to concentrate hard (with the new refingerings) on what has always come naturally, and maybe it's that she is maturing. Whatever the reason, her performance of the Mendelssohn was a little more restrained, a little more introspective, than some of her previous concerts here. Some of the most beautiful moments were tender, intimate phrases in which the artist seemed to be whispering through her violin.

The Opera House audience, which rose after the Mendelssohn for a rip-roaring ovation, was gratifyingly full for the occasion. They may have been attracted by Nadja, but they didn't come only to hear her; there were few empty seats after intermission, when music director Gerard Schwarz and the orchestra swung into Stravinsky's landmark, "The Rite of Spring."

Schwarz and his orchestra have recorded the "Rite" (on the Delos label), and it's probably a tidier performance than the one they played last night - but tidy doesn't count for much in Stravinsky. There's no way to match the visceral excitement of hearing that astonishing work in the concert hall, with the Opera House stage bursting at the seams with all the extra players (two tubas! bassoons galore! a cornucopia of horns! etc.) This time around, there's more drama, less noise, plenty of first-rate solos, and some ensemble playing that's almost exactly where it should be.

One of the evening's most potent surprises (and that's saying something, with Nadja and "Rite of Spring") was the second (Adagio) movement of David Diamond's Symphony No. 11, which was programmed on its own as a curtain-raiser. Premiered by the New York Philharmonic in December 1992, the Diamond Eleventh is a work the composer has described as an affirmation that "the symphony is still very much alive."

This Adagio movement gives compelling evidence that Diamond is right, and it whets the appetite for the rest of the Eleventh. Richly romantic and lyrical, with beautiful scoring for double reeds, the Adagio suggests at times a pastoral, at times a stately passacaglia, and at times an unresolved question. For this listener, it's Diamond's most accessible and most gorgeous music thus far.

As the composer approaches his 80th birthday this summer, now at the height of his compositional powers, it is exciting to consider the prospect of a brand-new symphony, to be completed in time to celebrate the opening of a new Seattle Symphony concert hall. If the new symphony is as fine as what we heard last night, it will be a Diamond well worth polishing.