An all-Russian program featuring
conductor Michael
Tilson Thomas and pianist Daniil Trifonov
lured Daniel and I to Severance Hall Saturday night, and we were richly
rewarded both in terms of the compositions and the performances. At a time when Russia’s government is rightly
distrusted, it’s worth remembering President Kennedy’s admonition that “no government
or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in
virtue”, and that Russia’s musical exports have richly benefited music lovers
the world over.
The program began with Stravinsky’s Scenes
de Ballet – a most unusual work that was commissioned for a mixed program
at Ziegfeld Theater in 1944. As with
Beethoven, Stravinsky’s work was influenced by goings on in the world – not
just musical happenings but world events as well. The optimism of the piece, more harmonically
friendly than most others from this composer, reflects the optimism that
existed in the United States during that era.
While hardly Coplandesque, there is a distinctly American flavor to the
suite of dance movements. I doubt
Stravinsky would be composing in the same manner if he saw the world as it is today. Thomas brought clarity and an appropriate
sense of dance to the performance.
Of Prokofiev’s five Piano Concertos,
the Second
is both the longest and the most demanding: Four sprawling movements,
harmonically pungent, truly knuckle-busting in terms of dexterity and stamina
required. The work has grown in
popularity over the last few decades, although the contrarian composer seems to
have had mixed feelings about it (he advised Horowitz to not bother learning
the piece, saying “it has too many notes and I don’t like it myself”). Like Prokofiev, Daniil Trifonov has gained a
reputation as a musician who marches to the beat of his own drummer, and so it
was with Saturday’s performance. Trifonov’s
conception of the Concerto was obviously deeply thought-out, and, while not
lacking in virtuosity, put musical values first – nothing about this
performance was ordinary. The opening
movement, an Andantino-Allegretto was taken at an unusually slow, brooding
pace. Yet I never had the impression
that Trifonov was dragging the tempo, and the buildup of tension in the explosive
cadenza was thrilling. The Scherzo was
especially Vivace with the parallel figurations executed perfectly. While the Intermezzo was full of snarling
menace, the Finale lunged along at a breakneck tempo. Despite the speed, Trifonov was able to
maintain clarity during the work’s many rapid-fire repeated notes, carefully
weight chords, and inventively mixed inner-voices. Thomas matched the soloist beat for beat, and
the orchestra responded with playing that was not merely brilliant, but
brilliantly pointed and balanced. The
audience was rewarded with an encore from Trifonov: a movement from Prokofiev’s
Romeo & Juliet.
“Don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like Tchaikovsky.”
– Vladimir Horowitz
Only the most pedantic and provincial
will consider Tchaikovsky’s
Sixth Symphony to be anything other than what it is: a bona-fide
masterpiece. Despite the tragic nature
of the Pathétique (a mistranslation of Tchaikovsky’s
intended “passionate”), there’s no evidence it was reflective of the state of
Tchaikovsky’s life at the time of its composition. He had just returned from a successful tour
of the United States, and after years of sniggering from Russia’s
intelligentisia about the quality of his compositions (not to mention his
personal life), his works were becoming increasingly accepted. Further, Tchaikovsky was assured that the
Russian tradition of composing Romantic music within traditional Classical
forms would continue via a young composer who’d greatly impressed him: Sergei
Rachmaninoff. So, while it was once
widely believed that Tchaikovsky committed suicide (and one crackpot theory
claimed that his suicide was “ordered” by a “court of honor”), the bulk of
evidence now indicates that his death, by cholera, was a the result of a tragically
reckless moment where the composer disregarded warnings to boil water as a
precaution before drinking it. But the
power of the Pathétique Symphony is such that a good
performance will leave one thinking
that perhaps Tchaikovsky did intend to put himself through days of cholera induced
agony before dying. Thomas’ rendition
certainly fit that bill, and I observed several in the audience openly weeping
at the work’s conclusion. In the preceding
three movements, Thomas brought an expert sense of pace, phrasing, and balance
to each moment and movement. And, yes,
there was a brief burst of applause after the third movement. (I also noticed that Thomas took a sip of
water before the final movement – was it intended as symbolism?) As I perused the program book before the
concert, I was pleased to see that Eric Sellen’s program notes rightly spanked
the Putin regime’s oppressive anti-LGBT laws, noting that since they were
enacted, new cases of HIV have skyrocketed.
But for those who’ve read this blog and
noted some of my political statements, please remember that I take President
Kennedy’s words to heart, and that my criticism is levelled at the Putin regime
and his puppets in the United States and elsewhere, not at the people of Russia.
