David Geffen
Hall at Lincoln Center. Orchestra (Seat
Y104, $58).
Program
Summer Night in
Madrid (Spanish Overture No. 2) (1848-51) by Glinka (1804-1857).
Violin Concerto
No. 2 in G minor (1935) by Prokofiev (1891-1953).
Symphony No. 1
in D minor (1895) by Rachmaninoff (1873-1943).
I have always
enjoyed Prokofiev’s second violin concerto ever since I was made aware of it by
my violin teacher some 50 years ago. We
heard Rachmaninoff’s second piano concerto last Saturday; among other things,
it is known as the piece the composer wrote after a disastrous performance of
the first symphony, the piece on tonight’s program. Glinka is considered the first significant
Russian composer, having received most of his music training in Italy and
Germany, since there was yet no Russian conservatories. All the ingredients to a great program. And the conductor is Russian.
High
expectations sometimes lead to disappointments.
By many objective standards tonight’s performance was great, but it was
not quite up to the standard I expected.
The biggest
disappointment is with the Prokofiev concerto.
The first notes were played by the violin, unaccompanied. In her desire to made it sound simple, she
played them without using vibrato. A
great violinist will be able to get the pitches right, others will use vibrato
to hide the intonation problems. Alas,
the soloist thought she belonged in the “great” category. While the intonation problems by-and-large
went away, the bad impression stuck with me.
The other disappointment is in the weak sound of the solo violin. We had heard Kopatchinskaja a couple of years
ago, performing in the Mostly Mozart Festival, and I had a similar
complaint. A slight surprise was she had
the score in front of her, which she referred to quite often. It didn’t seem to get into her playing, though.
The other harsh
remark I wanted to make about Kopatchinskaja is that she isn’t great
good enough to pull off the eccentricity she wants to pull off. The first thing you noticed was she didn’t
wear any shoes. From our seats in Row Y
she seemed to be wearing a tuxedo. On
closer look with the help of binoculars, the pants were ill fitting, and the
jacket showed the seams of a preliminary fit, with several cuts on the
back. All that brought to mind another
eccentrically dressed violinist: Nigel Kennedy. When I saw Nigel Kennedy in
Australia a few years back, I admired him for sharing the encore stage with
other performers. Tonight,
Kopatchinskaja shared the second encore with the concertmaster. The first encore was a modern piece (to the
best of my knowledge, something she wrote) that incorporated a lot of vocal on
her part.
Kopatchinskaja with the Concertmaster after the second encore.
In preparation
for the concert I looked at the score.
Turned out I thought it was Concerto No. 1, so it was for naught. However, it was interesting that Prokofiev
purposefully made Concerto No. 2 simpler; it sounded complicated enough, but
was indeed easier to follow than the first.
Unfortunately for tonight the following was mostly done with the left
brain rather than the right – the soloist managed to drain the emotion out of
it.
My reservation
that my complaint about the acoustics of the seat was dispelled by the
Rachmaninoff symphony. Here I had
another issue: it was too loud, way too loud.
Whom I really felt bad for were the musicians sitting on stage,
especially the ones in front of the percussion and brass sections. I hope they all wore ear protection. Nonetheless, it was impressive the sound a
full orchestra could make (a smaller ensemble was used for the first half.)
While I knew
that the horrible reviews for this symphony drove Rachmaninoff into despair, I
didn’t know that it was conducted by (a probably drunk) Glazunov, and that it
was not performed again in Rachmaninoff’s lifetime The score was discovered two years after the
composer’s death.
There is no
reason to disparage the symphony – Cesar Cui referenced “a conservatory in Hell”
– but it remained a bit inscrutable to me.
The first three movements were easy enough to follow, but when it got to
the fourth movement, I began to lose concentration, perhaps it was a bit too
long by then. The audience loved it,
though, jumping up to give Jurowski a standing ovation at the conclusion.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra after performing the Rachmaninoff Symphony. It is a large organization.
The program
began with a Spanish-themed piece by Glinka.
The short 10-minute piece contains quite a few episodes. I thought I would know at least some of the
tunes – I didn’t. It was enjoyable, and
demonstrated the great sound and precision of the orchestra.
This was the
first time we saw Vladimir Jurowski in person.
He conducted with energy and precision, sometimes with exaggerated
movement. We had seen his brother Dmitri
in Hong Kong a couple of years back.
The concert
began at 8 pm, a bit late for a weekday concert. Traffic was okay both ways, and we had a
simple dinner at Francesco Pizza before the event.
No comments:
Post a Comment