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MUSIC PREVIEW The Florida Orchestra Victor DeRenzi conductor. Beethoven Egmont Overture and Symphony No. 2, Stravinsky Pulcinella Suite and Strauss Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils. Concerts are Wednesday at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Thursday at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center and Saturday at the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg. All performances at 8 p.m. Tickets $13-$22; call 447-4210 (Pinellas) or 221-2365 (Hillsborough).
Conductor Victor DeRenzi has led the Florida Orchestra dozens of times from the darkened confines of the Sarasota Opera pit. While most eyes followed the action on stage, DeRenzi and the orchestra supplied an accomplished accompaniment that gained positive notices from the national press this past spring.
No longer consigned to the pit, DeRenzi will make his Tampa Bay debut conducting the Florida Orchestra in a purely instrumental program Wednesday at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater. He will make his subscription concert series premiere leading the orchestra in music by Beethoven, Stravinsky and Strauss, all composers who produced significant operas as well.
The shift from molding music with singers in mind to creating a purely instrumental sound requires a little adjustment, DeRenzi said.
``In opera, a lot of what happens with the music is determined by what the text is and what's happening on stage,`` DeRenzi said by phone recently from his home in New York. ``With an orchestral work, one doesn't have to contend with that. You make musical decisions on a purely musical basis instead of for dramatic reasons. For instance, you might decide that musically a fermata (held note) should be a certain length, but...