The Lake Placid Sinfonietta last Sunday evening, July 17, under the direction of Stuart Malina, demonstrated how a relatively small 20-member ensemble like this one may be all you need to well demonstrate centuries worth of music by the greatest composers.

On this night, they took on a pair of giants from the early Romantic period, Schubert and Mendelssohn, and gave them their proper due. The featured soloist, pianist Sara Davis Buechner, 

Ms. Buechner stormed onto the stage, spent a few anxious seconds adjusting the piano bench making sure she had the right distance from the pedals to stomp on them comfortably but with authority, and then injected the room full of electricity with her dazzling virtuosity on Menelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in D Minor.

As if her hands didn’t provide enough excitement with the sounds they produced, she can lend quite a visual element to the performance throwing her whole body into a huge attack as she throws her hands up high, rises off the bench some, and brings everything crashing down altogether assuring the fingers hit the right notes in the process.

Instead of the typical piano bench, maybe she should incorporate a specially programmed mechanical bull in the near future. If nothing else, she could give such YouTube stars as PewDiePie and Dude Perfect good reason to check their rearview mirrors to see who’s coming up behind them, and maybe send some complimentary tickets to John Travolta with the inscribed note, “See what you’ve started?”

Not to suggest she’s all flash and no substance because she’s successfully jumped through all the proper hoops to prove she belongs among the world’s top soloists with studies at The Juilliard School, more than enough prestigious competition awards and solid reviews in the New York Times and Washington Post.

Her energy was a timely arrival following the opening piece, er.

These musicians are all solid, well-trained professionals from all over the world who spend the fall through the spring playing in other orchestras and then join up in Lake Placid for a nice six-week summer gig. They don’t come cheap, they’re worth every dollar, and they’re masterfully directed by Mr. Stuart Malina, himself a polished professional who knows a few things about waving a baton and is no slouch on the piano himself.