Last night, finally, the regular season was underway! It was a typical gala opening night affair – sold out house (thank goodness!), well-to-do patrons dressed to the nines, the women of the orchestra bedecked in extra spangles and bling (allowed in the dress code specially for the occasion) and a program guaranteed to please most everyone, and disappoint no-one, with a household name soloist and a blockbuster concerto favorite.
It was an all-Tchaikovsky concert, but not an all-Tchaikovsky’s-music-sounds-the-same concert. The opening two pieces I’d never heard or played before the rehearsals this week – and that doesn’t happen all that often after 12 years in the chair.
The Mozartiana is a delightful suite for full orchestra that features an amazing set of concluding variations which showed off our sparkling, virtuosic wind section, our wonderful new concertmaster Jun Iwasaki, and our steadfastly brilliant principal clarinetist Yoshinori Nakao. This piece is like a Viennese confection – all sweetness and light, but not overdone – the piece ends and leaves you wanting a bit more, but not overstuffed as with super-sized American desserts.
Francesca de Rimini is another story – it’s about being full-throttle at all times, whether in the mode of being furious and frenzied, or being sweet and in the full throes of romantic ardor. It’s amazing that I didn’t know this piece – but I’ve always been more interested in the symphonies, and this piece is what was on the B-side (remember those?) or the “filler” on the CD, so it went unnoticed for years. It is a killer for the string players, there’s lots of scrubbing, and at the beginning of the season it can make for some early tennis elbow if you’re not careful to conserve and not overplay.
Finally, there was Van Cliburn and the First Piano Concerto. What can I say? The man is a musical icon. I can remember growing up in a family of classical music lovers, and some of my first experiences listening to music at home were hearing his recordings made shortly after his triumph in Moscow. I still love his account of the Prokofiev 3rd Concerto, recorded in Moscow with Kondrashin, I think, for its poetry and passion. He was a national hero for his win at the first Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in 1958, the height of the Cold War, and was the first classical artist to sell a million copies of a single recording (Tchakovsky 1st Concerto and Rachmaninoff 3rd Concerto).
Now, at the age of 73, he plays much better still than I would hope to at that age, and I don’t mean that in a condescending way, he still can play the piano, and well. He also appears remarkably youthful (both in visage and figure) even close up on stage – another remarkable achievement.
But, the aging body being what it is, the famous octaves didn’t thunder nearly as quickly as they used to – if seemingly just as loud, or perhaps now stentorian with added layers of experience (though he protested in rehearsal that he never could play those octaves in the first movement – I don’t believe it), and some of the filigree that should just float seemed to lack much of the former buoyancy that he brought to performances earlier in life.
However, whatever was lacking in subtlety last night was more than made up for in gravitas and selling his point of view. There were turns of phrase and tricks of timing that you never hear any more – and sadly so – because this great generation of artists is disappearing before our eyes, quicker and quicker it seems. And the generation which is replacing them largely seems more concerned with sterile efficiency and robotic perfection in execution.
Whatever the thoughts of those of us on stage, the audience was clearly enraptured by the experience of seeing Cliburn perform, and he graciously acknowledged the ovations with two encores: Rachmaninoff’s G# minor Prelude, and Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude (Op 10 no. 12) which were dispatched with aplomb and charismatic intensity.
It was a great early Fall night – with happy audiences and musicians heading off into the night for further fun and reflection on the evening’s sights and sounds, and a great start to the 2007-2008 season.
UPDATE:
Here’s a link to Cliburn playing the Tchaikovsky 1st (last movement) in his prime: