Concert Review: A Marathon for the Fingers

The Mariinsky Orchestra plays all five Prokofiev piano concertos.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Directing traffic: Valery Gergiev (standing, right) leads the Mariinsky Orchestra as pianist
Daniil Trifonov labors over the Prokofiev Third Piano Concerto.
Photo by Robert Altman © 2015 Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Although Serge Prokofiev is a master of 20th century music, his five piano concertos suffer undue neglect. It is the current mission of the Mariinsky Orchestra and its music director Valery Gergiev, to correct that oversight. On Wednesday night, the Mariinsky players opened a three-night stand at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The program: all five Prokofiev piano concertos, played in chronological order by five different soloists.

Concert Review: Rushing Into the Stratosphere

The Mariinsky Orchestra with Denis Matsuev at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The pianist Denis Matsuev returned to Carnegie Hall on Wednesday night.
Photo © Matsuev.com

The second of the Mariinsky Orchestra's two concerts this week at Carnegie Hall was in some ways similar to the first.. Outside, a dozen protesters appeared again, chanting slogans about music director Valery Gergiev and his close connection with the current government of Russia. Inside, cameras were mounted in the rear of the parquet and on stage left to capture Mr. Gergiev and his forces, in the first digital broadcast of an orchestral concert from Carnegie Hall on Medici.TV.

Concert Review: The Kid Goes Wild

Daniil Trifonov joins the Mariinsky Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. 

Daniil Trifonov displays fearless technique.
Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky © International Tchaikovsky Competition.

To celebrate the 120th anniversary of Carnegie Hall, Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra played a five-night stand at the famous venue, focusing on the music of Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who conducted the first Carnegie Hall concert in 1891.

Tuesday's fifth and final concert featured the evergreen First Piano Concerto, led with gusto by Mr. Gergiev. Daniil Trifonov, a fast-blooming 20-year old virtuoso and winner of the 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition, brought fire and skill to the solo piano part. This pianist has technique to burn, an played here at astonishing speed. This was not Mr. Trifonov's Carnegie debut, but judging from the thunderous reception, it may have been the young pianist's coming-out party.

The first thing you notice about Mr. Trifonov's playing is his hands, long, with delicately formed fingers. He opened the concerto with a fierce attack, hunched over the piano as if hacking into a difficult corporate mainframe. For the loping opening theme, the pianist drove the notes hard, playing from his shoulders and driving the work forward. He then raced into the first cadenza, and jaws dropped.

Through three movements, Mr. Trifonov tempered his attack with delicate playing that shimmered through the second movement. The finale, taken at a break-neck speed by Mr. Gergiev, tested the young pianist, putting the artist through his paces and letting audiences hear the potential in this young man. It was not the most technically perfect performance, but the passion and meaning of Tchaikovsky came through in both soloist and orchestra.

Mr. Trifonov's performance met with approval, and he obliged with two encores. The first: a quicksilver performance of Chopin's Grand Valse brillante emphasizing his liquid tone and light touch in the delicate passage-work. The second was a death-defying La Campanella, the treacherous, transcendental etude constructed by Franz Liszt from a work by Paganini. Mr. Trifonov thrilled the audience as he trilled up the keyboard, playing the highest keys (and shortest strings) with ease and speed in a region of the instrument where most pianists fear to tread.

The rest of the program gave Mr. Gergiev plenty of opportunity to show off the abilities of his Russian orchestra, choosing repertory that played to their strengths. The concert opened with three excerpts from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet ballet, climaxing in a lurching rendition of "Montagues and Capulets" that made the boards of the Hall shake with the powerful brass and dark-colored cellos and basses.

The concert ended with Shostakovich's muscular First Symphony, which lets the listener hear the sardonic young composer before censorship and despair came to dominate his life. The "D-S-C-H" musical signature ( crucial in his later, coded compositions) is heard, along with piano, celesta and a nose-thumbing timpani solo before the last coda. The short symphony allowed the Mariinskys to end their Carnegie Hall stand with two showpieces. First, Liadov's tone poem Babi Yar. Then, more Tchaikovsky: the beloved Polonaise from the opera Eugene Onegin.

Concert Review: Pinch Hitter Enters Starting Lineup

BSO's Sean Newhouse presents first program at Symphony Hall.

Sean Newhouse leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Photo by Michael J. Lutch © 2011 Boston Symphony Orchestra

The Boston Symphony Orchestra's second program of its 2011 season features conductor Sean Newhouse. This budding American conductor made a splash last February, subbing for an ailing James Levine, conducting a superb Mahler Ninth on two hours' notice. But with Mr. Levine now gone from Boston, Mr. Newhouse (who holds the post of assistant conductor at the BSO) had the opportunity to conduct his first subscription concert at Symphony Hall.

This proved to be a strong evening of orchestral war-horses, led with energy and style. The concert opened with Benjamin Britten's Four Sea Interludes from the opera Peter Grimes--a work originally commissioned in 1946 by Serge Koussevitzky, himself a former BSO music director. Mr. Newhouse offered smooth string tones, a brassy sunrise in Dawn and an idyllic picture of Britten's fishing village in Sunday Morning, complete with gossiping woodwinds.

The idyll yielded to the deceptive calm of Moonlight, which pictures the fisherman Grimes on the edge of panic, literally teetering on the edge of a cliff. The opera's raw emotions burst out in the final, furious Storm, led with great emotion and simultaneous restraint by Mr. Newhouse. The work ended with a moving orchestral elegy for Britten's doomed hero, a sympathetic epitaph for the unsympathetic Grimes.

Serge Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto is the most popular of the composer's five, an ideal showpiece for the right soloist. Here, it was French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. Mr. Bavouzet played the three movements with the right blend of ironic detachment and virtuoso technique. This concerto features some of Prokofiev's most challenging piano figures, driven with folk-like melodies that twist and turn, as the soloist dazzles the listener with raw technique.

In addition to impressive gymnastics (crossing hands in what pianists call the "pretzel trick") Mr. Bavouzet played with an elegant, liquid tone, creating legato transitions not often heard in most interpretations of this composer. The cadenzas were delicately played, with each note precisely in place and the whole flowing smoothly. Mr. Newhouse proved a strong accompanist, handling one tiny orchestral hiccough without missing another beat.

Mr. Newhouse returned to center stage for the Second (and most popular) Symphony of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. The product of strife and the 20-year struggle for that country's independence, the Second depicts conflict between Finland and neighboring Russia. The first movement depicts the idyllic Finland with the threat of war on the horizon. BSO assistant principal oboist Keisuke Wakao led off the folksy opening figure, answered by chugging strings and a majestic brass chorale.

With its plucked opening, the slow movement is all dread and suspense. Mr. Newhouse led this tricky, episodic Andante with care, creating the aural images of a Russian army on the march and its impending crack-down on the smaller country's dreams of independence. The third movement shows the Finns preparing for war, stocking up supplies and hunkering down as the conflict erupts. It was briskly played, with an elegaic second theme in the bassoons.

Sibelius ended this symphony on an optimistic note with a rising, surging theme led by the brass section that depicts (eventual) victory over the Russians. Mr. Newhouse responded to the material, riding the waves of brass and strings to lift the last pages of this mighty finale into a joyful union with the opening wind oboe theme. This was a statement concert from an important young conductor, whose arrival in Boston may be a key part of James Levine's lasting legacy to the BSO.