Tempting a new generation to taste classical music is one of the challenges that the Lancaster Festival tackles each year.
This time — at a family concert Monday night on the lawn behind the Ohio University-Lancaster campus — the Lancaster Festival Orchestra followed the advice frequently given to parents of picky eaters: Offer small amounts and wide variety, and hope that something will prove inviting.
The brisk, one-hour concert opened with a couple of bites from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker: The sprightly Russian Dance was followed by the Spanish Dance, during which young ballerina Sally Good did a few turns. Eighteen-year-old violinist Swathi Padmanabhan, who was featured on Gypsy melodies by Sarasate, lured a crowd of preschoolers to twirl in front of the stage.
Conductor Gary Sheldon missed no opportunity to throw out a few kernels of education along with the music.
"Everybody say the word concerto," he instructed.
"We can all shout ‘Bravo’ or ‘Brava’ now."
The rest of the evening was dominated by the Tweaksters, a duo hard to define: Regan Patno and Julia Snyder are ballet dancers, acrobats, percussionists and clowns, often in the same moment.
Performing separately and together, and backed sometimes by silence and at other times by snippets of familiar and lively classic pieces played by the orchestra, they used a variety of familiar and unfamiliar props that ranged from magic to sheer silliness. The Tweaksters’ antics might not have encouraged careful listening, but the orchestra played with flair and precision anyway.
The William Tell Overture (better-known to those of a certain age as the theme from The Lone Ranger) brought the two out in cowboy hats, turning somersaults and cartwheels and slipping across the surfaces of exercise balls with gravitydefying ease.
Accompanied by Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance, Snyder showed off a set of impressive abdominals and performed a ribbon dance of the sort that makes rhythmic gymnastics a debatable Olympic sport. To Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5, she performed a one--woman circus act, balancing on a ball and twirling an umbrella.
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