Oberon's Glade

Tag: Rachmaninoff Festival

  • Rachmaninoff Finale @ The NY Phil

    Trifonov

    Above: pianist Daniil Trifonov

    Tuesday November 24th, 2015 – The third and final programme of The New York Philharmonic‘s Rachmaninoff Festival brought us Daniil Trifonov’s triumphant performance of the composer’s 3rd piano concerto as well as the ever-popular Symphonic Dances.

    Mr. Trifonov had the audience in the palm of his hand from the moment he walked onstage. He gave a magnificent performance, with terrific support from the orchestra. The 3rd piano concerto is everything the 1st isn’t: both in terms of structure and as a display of the soloist’s technique and artistry, the 3rd readily eclipses the composer’s earlier effort.

    Mr. Trifonov’s fluent – indeed astonishing – command of the keyboard held the audience under a spell. Particularly marvelous was the cadenza (the longer of the two provided by the composer) where the young pianist spun out the music to scintillating effect. With cunning inventiveness, Rachmaninoff has the flute suddenly speak up in the midst of the piano’s long paragraph: this wind theme passes on to the oboe, clarinet, and horn before the focus returns to the piano, which ends on a lovely fade-out.

    The composer paints on a big orchestral canvas in this concerto: a deep ‘Russian’ theme in the first movement impresses, and later there’s a big dance theme. The Philharmonic’s horns were ablaze tonight, the cellos plush, and the various wind voices piped up expressively.

    As the concerto raced to its conclusion, Mr. Trifonov carried the audience along on his dazzling ride. A full-house standing ovation ensued as the young master bowed graciously both to the house and his fellow musicians. I didn’t recognize his encore – and neither did my pianist/friend Ta-Wei – but it was deliciously played.

    Morlot

    Above: conductor Ludovic Morlot

    The piano had hidden Maestro Morlot during the concerto, but after the interval we had sight of him as he led the orchestra in a colourful performance of Symphonic Dances. New York City Ballet-lovers will be familiar with this score from Peter Martins’ 1994 setting of it. It’s a grand piece, with slashing rhythms in the first movement and a wonderful waltz in the second. Rachmaninoff uses the alto saxophone – a sound I always love to hear – to evocative effect, though I could not find a credit for the soloist in the Playbill. The harp also makes some rhapsodic interjections. Overall the orchestra, with Sheryl Staples as concertmaster, sounded superb and they seemed to truly enjoy playing this piece.

    After their rapt attentiveness during the concerto, the audience seemed to lose a bit of focus during the second half of the program. One couple down the row from us feasted on chocolates and Pellegrino whilst texting literally throughout the Symphonic Dances, and the woman on Ta-Wei’s right decided to conduct her own version of the score.

    At the end of the concert I asked Ta-Wei if he thought Rachmaninoff was a great composer or just a very good one. He replied: “Well, he knew what he was doing.” True, amply true.

  • More Rachmaninoff @ The NY Phil

    Daniil-trifonov-4-rach-logo-w

    Saturday November 21st, 2015 – The New York Philharmonic‘s Rachmaninoff Festival continued tonight, bringing together pianist Daniil Trifonov (above) and conductor Neeme Järvi for the composer’s 4th piano concerto. The evening opened with Arkady Leytush’s orchestration of Rachmaninoff’s Russian Song, Op. 11, No. 3 and ended with Maestro Järvi and the orchestra on peak form for the Rachmaninoff 1st symphony. Incredibly, the symphony was having its NY Philharmonic premiere performances in this series of concerts.

    The Russian Song is a deep, soulful song; lasting all of five minutes, it was a beautifully-played prelude for the concerto which followed. The basic theme goes thru moody rhythmic and harmonic shifts, with the sound of chimes and hammered bells giving a liturgical feeling. Just as we are getting immersed in these sounds, the piece is over. 

    Daniil Trifonov scored another hit with the Philharmonic audience in this, his second program in the orchestra’s Rachmaninoff series. The piano concerto No. 4 took Rachmaninoff nearly two years to complete and the result was unusually long as concertos go. At its premiere in 1927 – with the composer at the keyboard and Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra – the critics bashed the piece and the composer set about editing it; it has come down to us in a relatively compact form of 25 minutes duration.

    Mr. Trifonov filled these minutes with luxuriant playing. From its sweeping start thru the pensive opening of the ensuing Largo, the third movement’s vivid cadenza, and on to the uninterrupted and varied demands the composer makes on the pianist in the final Allegro Vivace, Trifonov displayed an ideal blend of lyricism and the virtuosity. Finishing in triumph, the pianist basked in a prolonged standing ovation, and responded to the audience’s cheers with a briskly delicate rendering of the ‘Silver’ Fairy’s variation from SLEEPING BEAUTY. A magical moment.

    N jarvi

    Neeme Järvi (above)

    For all the felicities of Trifonov’s playing, I have to say that the piano concerto #4 didn’t really seize my imagination as a musical experience; but the Symphony No.1 absolutely did.

    This symphony was composed in 1895, and its 1897 premiere, conducted by an allegedly drunk Alexander Glazunov, was nothing less than a disaster and sent Rachmaninoff into a deep depression. The work was withdrawn, the score – in a two-piano draft – languishing in the archives of the Glinka Museum in Moscow. It wasn’t until after the composer’s death that the orchestra parts were found in the archives of the Leningrad Conservatory. The symphony was reconstructed in full and given a ‘second premiere’ in Moscow in 1945, where it was at last accorded a warm welcome. It now recognized as a exemplar of the Rachmaninoff style.

    The only mystery is why it has taken so long for the Philharmonic to present it, for these performances mark the orchestra’s first of this work. It was an unalloyed pleasure to encounter this symphony live, and thanks to Maestro Järvi and the artists of this great orchestra, the performance was truly engrossing.

    A veritable treasure chest of melodic and rhythmic delights, the 1st symphony provides numerous opportunities for the principal players to ‘sing’: Anthony McGill (clarinet), Liang Wang (oboe), and Robert Langevin (flute) all outstandingly clear and true, and tonight’s concertmaster Michelle Kim in a lovely violin solo. A grand passage for massed horns and violins was especially gratifying for me, a one-time horn player.

    I gave up trying to take notes (*) midway thru the symphony: I simply wanted to take it all in and savor the live experience. I’ll search the symphony out on YouTube and delve into it more deeply next week, but I do want to mention the particular inventiveness of the concluding Allegro con fuoco which starts with military drum rolls and eventually develops into a true Rachmaninoff ‘big melody’. Liang Wang’s dulcet oboe sounds yet again, then some wonderful rhythmic patterns develop. Things build, and then – out of the blue – there’s a tremendous, walloping bang on the gong: the sound is allowed to evaporate into thin air as the other musicians sit silently. Then they take up a last melodic passage, building to a big finale.

    My hope is that this symphony will soon be programmed for additional Philharmonic performances…hopefully under Maestro Järvi’s baton.

    * (The main reason I stopped taking notes was the distraction of a cellphone ringing in our immediate vicinity; a minor annoyance during the concerto, it became a full-blown nuisance during the symphony.  The ushers came twice to attempt to isolate the source without disrupting the music, but the irritant continued. For a few moments I lost the thread of my concentration, and then I decided just to surrender to the music for the rest of the evening.)