Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, Orchestra (Seat
T105, $72).
Program
L’Apprenti sorcier: Scherzo d’apres une ballade de Goethe
(The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Scherzo after a ballad of Goethe) (1897) by Dukas
(1865-1935).
Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 63 (1935) by
Prokofiev (1891-1953).
Galantai Tankoc (Dances of Galanta) (1933) by Kodaly
(1882-1967).
Suite from L’oiseau de feu (The Firebird) by Stravinsky
(1882-1971).
For a concert that held such promise, this was somewhat
of a disappointment.
Let’s start with the first piece. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is always a crowd
pleaser. It is one of the few
compositions where association with a specific story line is quite
straightforward – thanks of course to the Disney film Fantasia. While the orchestra sounded precise, it sounded
flat.
Perhaps my lack of excitement about the piece could be
attributed to my familiarity with it.
Nonetheless, deep inside I was beginning to suspect this was going to be
one of those concerts where “everything was done correctly but it still wasn’t
that great”.
I expressed my disappointment at Batiashvili’s
performance of Prokofiev’s first violin concerto and was looking for a better
experience with the second. While my prior
experience with Kavakos was not all positive, I did expect him to have the
technique to pull it off. Indeed he put
in a much more polished and solid performance, but it was by-and-large uninspired. In the past Kavakos’s playing reminded me of
someone practicing an etude, and he was not all that different today. The brilliant technique couldn’t make up for
the emotionally flat performance.
I did learn from the Playbill a few things about the
concerto: Prokofiev still lived in Paris when he began writing this piece,
although he would return to Russia soon; this concerto was written quite a few
years after the first, which was published in 1917; like many other Russian
composers, Prokofiev is considered a great orchestrator.
During our trip to Europe last November we drove from
Vienna to Budapest (well, the tour operator did) and I don’t remember passing
through the town of Galanta, where Kodaly spent seven years as a child. An examination of a map shows that the town
is quite far away from the road connecting the two capitals. The piece
performed today certainly sounded Hungarian; it would take a very knowledgeable
musicologist to tell that it is influenced by folk songs from this specific
region. The Playbill does quote Kodaly
as saying he took the principal themes from a book of music “after several
Gypsies from Galanta.” The tempo markings
in the Playbill are: Lento; Allegretto moderato; Allegro con moto, con
grazioso; Allegro; and Allegro vivace.
This may lead one to believe there are five different dances. If they are, they are played without breaks,
and each of the dances is not quite confined to the corresponding tempo.
The program concluded with Stravinsky’s Firebird
Suite. It at least to some degree
salvaged today’s performance. Even the
Commentator’s writeup provided a lot of new and interesting information, which
I either didn’t know or had forgotten. The
original ballet music was written in 1910, and the suite is much simplified a
five movements, with relatively simple descriptions: (I) The Firebird and its
dance; variations of the Firebird; (II) The Princesses’ Round-Dance (Khorovod);
(III) Infernal Dance of King Kahschei; (IV) Lullaby; and (V) Finale.
This is a loud piece of music where things got a bit
crazy, especially during the Infernal Dance.
Poor Rebecca Young, she just had to keep putting on and taking off her
earplugs. We are beginning to worry if
her hearing is beginning to deteriorate; we wish her well.
For some reason, the Program Notes stresses that each
composer is a great orchestrator: “dazzling orchestration” for The Sorcerer’s
Apprentice; “a master orchestrator” for Prokofiev; “brilliantly orchestrated
modernism” for Kodaly; and “a great showpiece of orchestration” for The
Firebird. Which brings me to the
conductor, a young fellow born in 1986.
He certainly has gone places already, finishing up a six-year stint with
the Los Angeles Philharmonic as its resident conductor (that means he started
when he was 20!) He is also the chief
conductor of Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra, and will be its music director starting
in the 2014-2015 season.
Today’s concert started at 2 pm. Since I had no idea if the return traffic
would be bad for a Summer Friday, we took the train.
The New York Times review is very positive. It does remind me that I have seen a couple
of Bringuier’s performances before.
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