World of Music

Symphony in C
Agustin Hadelich, violin
Rossen Milanov, conductor
Gordon Theater, Rutgers-Camden

Conductor Rossen Milanov is a specialist in 20th century Eastern European and Russian rep symphonic classics, but outside of Tchaikovsky, he has not programmed much from the romantic era, but he closed out Symphony in C’s 13-14 season with a thrilling performance of romantic works – Robert Schumann Manfred Overture (1849), Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto (1864) and Brahms orchestral version of the Piano Quintet op. 25 (1861)- that could bring accusations that he‘s been holding out on us.

Even though the Gordon Theater wasn’t completely full, there was without doubt a sense of musical occasion in the air for the second appearance of Agustin Hadelich the 30 year old violin virtuoso, and that is a deserved tag, as he put his imprimatur immediately on Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. Just a few bars of orchestral intro and Hadelich essays a commanding, unfussy entrance, his attack meticulous. The integral elements of the piece, seasoned control, instantly present as well as passionate playing.

But first the Manfred and Schumann was bloomed as more than a warm-up piece, showcasing the orchestra’s detailing and thrust.

Hadelich is technically hot in delivering the fine-line dimensions of this masterpiece and his crafting of the work as a whole is masterful. The cadenza sections couldn’t have been more reflective of the dimensions and ideas of Mendelssohn. The orchestra to an extend played second fiddle, not that he was upstaging, he just was that good. Meanwhile, Milanov had them razor sharp and equalized for every orchestral overlay and handoff. Beautiful structural support. The Mendelssohn was in the rank of Stern and Perelman, and in certain ways, perhaps even better. The tempos were quick, there was more tone weight in some of the more lyrical lines.

At the end the audience took a second then started bounding to their feet. Three calls for Mr. Hadelich and he returned and played the technically fiendish Paganini Capriccio no. 5; many in the string section didn’t take their eyes of his fingering. At the end another SO. People will be talking about this performance as in ’were you there the night.’

The closer, Johannes Brahms’ Piano Quintet in G minor, op. 25, transcribed for orchestra by Arnold Schoenberg in 1937, is so brilliantly played by this orchestra, you can easily believe they have been refining their performance for decades. It amply demonstrates the technical acumen of Symphony in C. and the clarity of Milanov’s musical directorship, since this is a professional training ground and young musician move on to other orchestras.

The vibrant horns in the rondo with engulfing burnished fanfares overtaking Brahms’ mannered theme, then the full gallop of the orchestra led by concertmaster Hannah Ji, with those dervish violin lines. Milanov’s conductor circle cello, violins bringing a crystalline lush salon enclave. Milanov lets the full orchestral passages reach sonic proportions, but with translucence. Also excellent oboist Rita Mites, and lead flutist Megan Emigh. This program shows this orchestra’s ensemble clarity and passion at its best.

Critic’s role

Critical condition

My friend Inna Heasley asked me to write an essay about the role of criticism in the arts & I thought I would repost here because as a statement of my philosophy in arts reporting as we go into the next Philadelphia season. For what it’s worth, this is my approach as an arts journalist.

As an arts journalist I try to be mindful of the real role critics and criticism should play in the world of arts. I think of the essential primer found in Oscar Wilde’s classic The Picture of Dorian Gray where one of the characters instructs that “diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.”

This truism is unfortunately ignored by audiences who follow lofty opinions, not to mention the dictates of the commerce of art. It is perhaps colder comfort for the playwright, choreographer, conductor, composer or artist who is at the financial mercy of professional critics, fairly or unfairly, not to mention hostile audiences.

Wilde also proclaimed that, in the scheme of things ‘All art is useless,’ so, by association, critics should be considered even more expendable. The irony here is that Wilde, of course, lived for art and actually went to jail just as much for his artistic criticism of Victorian hypocrisies, as he did for consorting with male prostitutes.

My other favorite line about critics in from Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead, Revisited. When the young Oxford student tells his father that he wants to be an artist, his father responds with this thinly veiled missile from Waugh: “I won’t have undraped models all over the house…or critics with their horrible jargon.”

Whenever I read those breathless blurbs on posters of movies, plays and operas I always think of that phrase – horrible jargon – and try to itemize, without dwelling, when I have been guilty of said jargon myself.

Unfortunately, horrible jargon and the fallout buzz can steer the course of art and careers.

The list of important plays, operas, ballets and symphonies that were trashed, misunderstood and closed down because of bad reviews is astounding. A few examples of the prevailing critics being pathetically wrong:   

• Vaslav Nijinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, the site of a theater riot, with dissenting critics actually doubling their venom by thrashing Igor Stravinsky‘s score.
• Georges Bizet’s Carmen was rejected by critics because it was the first hybrid opera to incorporate comic and tragic aesthetic.
• West Side Story limped along in tryout towns, drawing venomous coverage from theater writers. 

Well, Nijinsky went mad and Bizet had a heart attack before they knew that they had changed their respective arts forever. The “fab four” of West Side – Lenny, Jerome, Arthur and Stephen – collectively made the critics eat their words as the show became a cultural phenomenon and each of the creators went on to dominate two generations of American musical theater.

In his book Look, I Made the Hat Sondheim adroitly defines the difference between critics and reviewers~ “Reviewers are reporters, their function is to describe and evaluate, on first encounter, a specific event,” they are “victims of deadlines…They are of necessity drive-by shooters.”  Sondheim writes, in contrast, critics have the luxury of time, which “affords them distance, they can take in the whole range of the art and the artist.” Sondheim also notes deftly that “over time even the better reviews become desensitized, and atrophy sets in.”

Ouch! But think of what he could have said and how many examples could he have given, starting with the first very negative critical response he received for his masterpiece musical Company.

Of course, the other side of the spectrum is a writer who is completely drunk on his own laudatory opinions. Pauline Kael’s review of the artsy potboiler Last Tango in Paris springs lustily to mind. Clammy film, clammier review. Kael may have had an artistic epiphany that it would change film forever, but even its legendary star, Marlon Brando, claimed he had no clue as to what it was about. The fallout was that even though Tango was an international hit, it aided in creating a backlash against films with less arcane, but more relevant, sexual content.

I bring up Kael and the movies to make a key point in criticism as it is practiced now:  movie reviewing has all but ruined the reviewing of live performance. People expect tag line assessments – the typical Meryl Streep IS Margaret Thatcher hyperbole that is so common. Or worse, the thumbs up/down condemnations of Caligula in the Coliseum.

The jargon used for movies is lacking in the extreme when you are reporting what occurs live on a performance stage – with living, breathing actors, musicians, and dancers who are collaborating in real time with a technical crew after working daily with a creative team. The production budgets alone make them completely different enterprises.

Choreographer Twyla Tharp punctures reviews by branding them ‘abstracts.’ Indeed, dance and instrumental music present the most challenges for a writer to translate into lay terms and, if done well, can have the most benefits, since by nature, these art forms are languages in themselves.

My preference is to be stealth as much as possible and write a review heavy on concrete technical analysis then have fun with the rest. But for various reasons that is not always possible. To make a critical point and move on, not to dwell on moments the audience should discover themselves.

The actor Richard Burton made the salient point in an interview with Dick Cavett in 1980s, that  praise-lavishing critics can ruin an otherwise magical moment and ruin it for everybody including the performer. 

It is best to read reviews that hit all of the major bases, without being formulaic, petty or cheap. It is a balancing act of rhetorical devises. Editors consistently prefer more casual, chatty observations.

The great dance scholar and critic Gary Parks’ credo was“Report what you see on stage and the rest will fall into place.”  This is, for me, a guiding principle.  Reviewing is in fact an intense reporter’s assignment and at its best it calls on many journalistic skills that can illuminate.

Actual reportage can be especially valuable in dance and music, more abstract forms which, unlike movies and plays, generally have much less exposure than other more mainstream entertainments.

Then there are coded reviews, which in the past occurred most frequently in dance, a point by point description of a performance carrying the unstated message that the critic disapproves of the performance, but is too polite to spell it out. I think it is healthier to state your view cleanly –  pro, con or mixed – just so you back it up. And always without piling on. Make a substantiated critical point and move on to the next journalistic point.

Authoritative criticism and certainly the more valuable craft of actual reporting can be a useful tool in navigating the arts and where you want your money and time to go. Especially helpful in hard economic times. But it is my view that no one should follow a critic’s opinion, you should follow your viewer instincts and allow the experience of arts in all of their potential forms.

World of Music

Many of us were stunned to hear that the fine pianist-conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch had died this weekend. A beautiful tribute and remembrance by the Philadelphia Orchestra at Sunday’s concert in Verizon Hall. I reviewed the program for American Record Guide‘s spring issue. Here is the section about Maestro Sawallisch. I was lucky enough to see him conduct about a dozen times before he retired and his concerts were always joyful, instructive and had a sense of musical occasion.

~But sad news eclipsed all of the excitement about the Rite of Spring 100th observance when Nézet-Séguin walked onstage and handed a mic to concertmaster David Kim who informed the audience that Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor of this orchestra from 1993-2003 had died at his home in Germany at aged 89.

Mr. Kim spoke for many in the orchestra who played under Sawallisch in remembering his stellar leadership. He remembrance of a telling moment with the conductor when the orchestra was on tour in Ames, Iowa. Before they went onstage Kim commented to the maestro that maybe the orchestra should focus on a big upcoming date in Chicago and Kim recalled that Sawallisch “gave me a withering look and said ‘We give 100 percent, everything, every time when we go onstage.”

Nézet-Séguin then switched up the program and cued Richard Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, in his predecessor’s honor. Indeed, a fine elegy, and not lost on this audience, those Wagnerian strings in such pristine control. At the conclusion, there was a moment of silence that was indeed utterly silent, and then Nezet Seguin turned and exited his hands clenched together.

World of Music

Composer Zhou Long was one of 100 student musicians out of 18,000 applicants to be the first to attend the newly reopened Beijing Central Conservatory in 1977, a year after China’s Cultural Revolution. In the 80s, he led the musical mission of introducing ancient and contemporary Chinese music to the West.

Long became director of Music from China at Columbia University. His own 1982 composition Song of the Ch’in is the intoxicating opening track of the New Zealand String Quartet’s new release Asian Music for String Quartet with a theme of ancient music fused with contemporary compositional forms.

Ch’in (gin) is a traditional Chinese seven-stringed, plucked zither and is transcribed for string quartet to explore its essential musical qualities of range and timbre to modern audiences. ‘Song’ tells many musical stories past and present, and time-traveling artistry. It also is demonstrated how versatile this quartet is in reproducing the austere earthiness of the ch’in voicing.

It is the perfect prologue to Cambodian-American composer Chinary Ung’s Spiral III (1990), an intimate and bio-historical work. Ung, in fact, is compressing cultural markers of memories of Cambodian villages and culture of his childhood and the impending genocide of the Khmer Rouge. This courageous piece has a soul-searching arc that documents incomprehensible human tragedy and climb out of it with renewed purpose. It unfolds in tremulous and spikey string clusters. The stunning technique and theatrical refinement in the playing by NZSQ just haunts your senses. This is a modern masterpiece.

Pianist-composer Gao Ping also contemplates time and borders in Bright Light and Cloud Shadows (2007). Pohl and Beilman’s taut violin lines fly to a vanishing point or stay jagged in the resolves are interlocked with Ansell’s chromatic viola, while Gjelsten’s rich descending cello line appears and vanishes. You wonder if Ping composes on piano because he writes so vividly for string quartet.

NZSQ includes the ethereal A Way a Lone (1981) by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, the only deceased composer on this collection. The title is from a line in James Joyce’s Finnegan‘s Wake and Takemitsu was originally commissioned by the Tokyo String Quartet. Takemitsu’s is a tonal tragedian and this has cinematic grandeur and the intimacy of a chamber piece.

Tan Dun’s Eight Colors is packed with splashy effects; even without his trademark instrumentation (stone, paper, water, et al) Dun’s eight vignettes start with “Peking Opera” which give a clue that they are literal narratives in miniature. They seem truncated because they are so evocative that they leave you hungry for more. “Zen” has a meditative (om) seed sound running through, even though it sound-morphs to what sounds like, but can’t be assumed as, distortion. It bleeds into the menacing pizzicato and instrument claps of “Drum and Gong” the interlude before the whip-lashing, bent note of cloudiness, with its suspended approach, that accumulates to some sonic doom. In “Pink Actress” string lines that vault or fall or ping vaults with wry stoicism. “Black Dance” is a thriller of galloping piques and clusters. “Red Sona” has volcanic but playful string roundelays that twirl, seemingly, off a cliff.

NZSQ recorded this at St. Anne’s Church, Toronto, Canada in the summer 2010 and is well engineered by Norbert Kraft. You can only hope that they tour this repertoire at some point.

Jazz World

The Jazz Standards
By Ted Gioia
Oxford University Press

Ted Gioia is a jazz musician, teacher and author of many books on music, among them  The History of Jazz ,  West Coast Jazz ,  The Birth (and Death) of the Cool and  Delta Blues , so who better to write  The Jazz Standards: A Guide To the Repertoire. Formatted in encyclopedic style, the book provides capsule histories of the creative circumstances and performance life of each song that comprises the jazz standard rep. Gioia gives practical use to discussion of harmony, rhythm, melody, modals, chromatic lines, and the lyric-music dynamic. Aside from the musicological aspects for a full discussion of the song that may be of only of passing interest for the lay reader, he otherwise packs these entries with entertaining song lore.

As a young jazzman, Gioia realized that “in-depth study of the jazz repertoire is hardly a …sideline, but essential for survival, “Gioia writes in the introduction. He is referring to what it takes as a player to maintain many versions of well know songs and be ready for per gig interpretations and improvisations. His aim is to “to unravel the evolution of these compositions over time.”

Take his entry about the Gershwin brothers classic A Foggy Day, Gioia deftly describes the arc of the song, how its initial somber atmospherics bloom into a luminous love song. Gioia insightfully concludes, “…the composer’s most inspired melodies, especially noteworthy for the quirky final bars, reminiscent of a military fanfare- with echoes of the English folk tune.”

Of Bart Howard’s  Fly Me to the Moon he chronicles its first flight when it was titled ‘In Other Words’ first sung by Nancy Wilson in 1959. Its fame was sealed the following year by Peggy Lee on the Ed Sullivan Show. The song became a huge hit after that and everyone wanted to record it, even with its squirrelly lyrical-music structure. Later the Frank Sinatra-Basie Band version was flown to the moon by Buzz Aldrin on his 1964 lunar mission.

The history of such a classic as Hoagy Carmichael/Mitchell Parish’s Stardust we find out that Carmichael may have been inspired by love but was more concerned with composing a “style of improvisation.” the entry quotes Mel Torme, who kept it in his repertoire his whole career as described that Stardust “rambles up the scale and down” yet is “one of the most bittersweet examples of ‘lost love’ ever written.” He disseminates lots of artistic information, but not at the expense of the mystique.

Gioia covers the range of songs from the beginnings jazz in ragtime, the blues, tin-pan alley, big band, be-bop, cool, Latin with a trunk load of classics from Broadway. His concise, valuable analysis about the pivotal recordings like Duke Ellington   Mood Indigo  for instance being rightly considered in both jazz and classical musical idioms, is an example of his expansive narrative.

Songs by all of the American master songsmiths- Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Harold Arlen, Dorothy Fields, et, al. Equal attention is paid to such jazz innovators Ellington, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, Horace Silver, among others. Gioia also assesses the impact of indelible performances by Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, Rosemary Clooney, Sarah Vaughan, just to name a few.

Gioia also doesn’t ignore such accomplished underappreciated jazz composers as Wayne Shorter. Shorter is represented in this standards compendium with his 1966 composition Footprints while he was with Miles Davis’ quintet along with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. “Davis sought to establish different rules of engagement, ones that allowed him to find new creative spaces at the limits of-but still within- conventional structures.” Gioia deftly sums up.

Editorially, Gioia’s expertise and authority over the whole spectrum of jazz music and its history is at play in Jazz Standards, he ends each summary with a listing of what he considers the best recordings of the songs.

There are a few inexplicable omissions by Gioia (I looked in vain for  I’m a Fool to Want you), so one gripe would be that Gioia explains in the introduction that his selection process was based on the how relevant the songs were now and that strikes as a bit arbitrary. Mostly, though, The Jazz Standards is an invaluable, unique and comprehensive reference.

Ballet

 Dancing on the Iron Curtain

The ica DVD compilation Treasures of the Russian Ballet of extracts from both the Kirov and Bolshoi Ballets filmed by the BBC in the 60s is, indeed, an invaluable trove of performance rarities from the Soviet era. The dancers were, in many cases, in top artistic form, but were overshadowed by the few who had defected to the world stage and international stardom. It is instructive to see these companies, at the height of their powers, even if they were at the mercy of the Kremlin.

From the dancers of the Leningrad State Kirov Ballet (now the Mariinsky Ballet) is the full first act of legendary choreographer Yuri Grigorovich’s remake of The Stone Flower a folk tale of a maiden and a village engraver. Principal dancers Yuri Soloviev and Alla Sizova have gorgeous chemistry and technique. Filmed in 1961, what strikes you instantly is the skill in which the cinematography is preserving the integrity of the performance, with dancers full bodies shown through most of it.

Grigorovich, who later created Spartacus, as a nationalist ballet, does not show much choreographic range in this ballet, but, as these dancers thrillingly show, it has narrative intensity and technical precision. The use of pantomime and Russian folk idioms is masterful, especially in such ensemble as the “Dance of the Unmarried Men” with wily references to Cossack and czardas steps. The corps de ballet women are equally impressive in the ensemble lines, that backdrop for the electrifying presence of the mysterious and lithe Alla Osipenko.

Serge Prokofiev’s score has both fire and intimacy and is lustily conjured by conductor Niyazi and the Covent Garden Orchestra. Excerpts from The Bolshoi Ballet classical repertoire, mostly filmed studio stagings during the company’s 1963 season, fill out the collection. Here are some of the highlights.

Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake Act 2 dancing at the Royal Opera House in 1956 with Yuri Fairi conducting the CGO, with Bolshoi stars Galina Ulanova as Odette and Nicolai Fadeyechev as the Prince performing the central pas de deux, flanked by the corps women. Fairi really pours on the symphonic melodrama and actually it fits the heavy drapery of Lev Ivanov – Alexander Gorsky’s, heavy handed classicism. Ulanova and Fadeyechev are a bit clunky in moments, especially under some stark spotlights and jarring camera angles, but the occasion of the tour and the duet’s amped-up theatricality makes this a historic performance.

Raisa Struchkova and Mikhail Lavrovsky fare better in the ballroom scene from Act 2 of Prokofiev’s Cinderella. Struchkova has glittering carriage and clean execution and Lavrovsky has the look of a prince, and it doesn’t hurt that he spins like a nuclear helix.

The legendary Maris Liepa is Albrecht to Ekaterina Maximova Giselle in the Act II pas de deux. Liepa, a fine actor, was part of the new crop of men who were redefining the role of the danseur. This couple lets this iconic choreography breath with their superb pacing. Maximova has lightning speed point work and airy carriage, while Liepa dances with subtle abandon.

Vladimir Vasiliev is the barber Basilio and Maya Plissetskaya the sultry Kitri in Minkus’ Don Quixote. Vasiliev, who will later have his greatest triumph creating the role of Spartacus, is so commanding, even when he has minor flaws in this performance. Vasiliev might not have the technical precision that became his trademark, but he attacks this role opposite and equally fiery and screen luminous Plissetskaya.

Much credit should go to the unaccredited cameramen and production crew at the BBC. They knew what they were doing, they filmed the dancers whole bodies, in tight screen composition and they traveled in group scenes to avoid a stagey distance. Foremost they worked the cameras to capture the performance level of the dancers, with aesthetic intimacy. The clarity of the black and white film stock also enhances detailing of these performers, who so powerfully embody the generations of Russian classicism.

MetroScape

Just got back from Ghenady Meirson’s free concert version of Tchiakovsky opera Iolanta at AVA with a fine cast of wonderful voices. It is always instructive to hear Tchiakovsky when Ghenady is at the piano. There are two more chances to hear some great voices singing this rarely performed masterpiece. Rarely performed because of its length 90 minutes- It was originally was on a split bill with the Nutcracker- and the complexity of the score, Ghenady said afterward, rubbing his hands.

Russian week continues two nights later with the first every appearance in Philly of the Russian National Orchestra playing Shostakovich, Khatchaturian, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glinka and of course Tchaikovsky. Some of the selections accompanied by Cirque de la Symphonie, the mostly Eastern European troupe of acrobacts and aerialists.

The Mann Center was pretty jammed for a sultry and overcast night, with a game crowd, young and old. A most surreal moment came when Jarek and Darek, two strongmen in gold body make-up and Grecian corinthian briefs, posed on a platform and executed a an adagio gymnast routine set to Shastakovich’s Symphony no. 5- one incredible movement had Darek aloft in a one-arm handstand on Jarek’s head- doubly impressive because his body was splayed past any vertical balance, it was a purely strength move.

Not to be outdone, RNO was so vibrant that the performers in front of them didn’t completely steal the show. The highlight for me was the Borodin’s Polovisian Dances, surpassing its famous theme ‘Stranger in Paradise’ which was just enfolded into such a rousing, very earthy, very Russian epic.

Continuing Russian week to stave off the hot weather, I’m reviewing a new novel set partially in St. Petersburg and other winter wonderlands. Although I can’t divulge the book because it isn’t out ’til Sept. I can say that it is a fantasia of cultures, countries and conflicts as lived and recounted by the gay brother of famed 20th century Russian novelist. A fabulously inventive and unexpected novel, which could easily slide into the pantheon of classic gay literature.

Classical Philly

Mann Center | July 9

The Pittsburgh Symphony last performed in Philadelphia in 1976 and they were back last week at the Mann Center for nothing less than a triumphal return for an evening of Beethoven. PSO immediately stated their musical authority in their Egmont opening, with strings that just retooled the acoustics at the open air Mann Center, which has more than one traveling wormhole. When the humidity is high, as it was on this night, there can be string haze and wayward horns, but if conditions were not ideal for these musicians, they weren’t showing it. PSO looked smaller on the Mann stage, than the home team, but size isn’t everything and this orchestra carved a huge, cohesive and sustained sound. Egmont was instantly vibrant, the strings just sliced through the air with power and dimension and the horn heralds had such dramatic impact. Conductor Arild Remmreit wanted to be inside the subtleness of Beethoven, not rely on the classical theatricality alone, his pacing thrilling and the fanfares built on a humming orchestral drive.

The exuberance was tamped down for soloist Teo Gheorghui, the Swiss-Canadian 19-year old studying at the Curtis Institute in Philly with Gary Graffman. His entry into the Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 seemed too soft, tentative, as opposed to subtle and for some of the 1st movement seemed detached from the orchestra, with one or two vaporous hand-offs. But, presently, he was just fully engaged, past virtuosity and with luminous interpretative skill. He completely entranced with his encore of a piano transcription, Fritz Keistler‘s Lebenstand, in an altogether magical performance, so filled with artistry and humanity.

 But, the marquee draw of this concert was Beethoven’s Symphony No 5 and PSO delivered nothing less than its metaphysical and visceral power. Easy to anticipate the symphony’s theatricality, but Remmreit illuminated the many aspects of it that are easily missed by its grandeur.

Maestro Remmrelt didn’t have to rely on the 5th known profundity, he gave it all the organic transcendence that puts it on a category of its own. Beethoven hanging in the sultry air under a hazy moon with the city skyline glittering in the distance made this a magical night in Philly. Remmreit looked exhausted at the end of it and as he moved through the orchestra to present each section, the applause was lusty and expressing warm appreciation that the Pittsburgh Symphony was back in town.  .

World of Music

 

Philadelphia Orchestra |Vasily Petrenko, guest conductor
Stephen Hough, pianist
Verizon Hall
March 19, 2011

There are reasons why Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2 is rarely performed, starting off with the mach-speed hand dexterity required in the solo passages, not to mention the uniqueness of its orchestral structure. The musical implications in this concerto seem to foreshadow a new classical era and even concepts in jazz. Russian conductor Vasily Petrenko, in his first guest spot with the Fab Phils, kept to a straightforward, unfussy approach in essaying the tight dynamics between soloist and orchestra. And who cares about the history when you are spellbound watching Stephen Hough play mach-speed passages from memory?

Hough gets inside Tchaikovsky’s fevered-note density so completely, you catch on that this is inexplicable alchemy on top of virtuosic skill. It would be easy to get lost in the solos, but Petrenko’s ability ignites the full scope of the work. A bit tamped down was the second movement string dialogue between violinist Juliette Kang and cellist Efe Baltacigil. Both are exquisite players, with sinewy expressiveness, but not quite matching Hough’s sheer power, which surged majestically during the full orchestral sections.

Hough left you exhausted, but Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 more than snapped you back to attention in the second half. Actually, the dissonant waves in first movement just enveloped the hall. Petrenko got to all of the composer’s “freedom of man” subtext instantly—a Prokofiev signature that reached concussive proportions, the encroaching symphonic beats like a diabolical metronome. (Is it nationalism or veiled political protest in Stalinist Russia?) But this symphony is equally lustrous in the quieter interludes. Petrenko was physically expressive while conducting the subtler phrases, showing complete involvement with the musicians.

World of Music

The Philadelphia Orchestra
Charles Dutoit, conductor
Jeremy Denk, pianist
Verizon Hall, Philadelphia Oct. 8

New York based pianist and star blogger Jeremy Denk seems to like the sixth borough, otherwise known as Philly, performing at Verizon Hall for the third time in the last two years. He was in front of Charles Dutoit and the Philadelphia Orchestra very much the showman. He played to a sparce Friday afternoon subscription crowd, the center of an interesting, not entirely cohesive program of Liszt, Prokofiev and Henri Dutilleux. Dutoit wanted, however obliquely, to highlight musical connections between these works and the maestro is also kicking off a season long examination of French composers.

Dutilleux, now 94, is musical heir apparent to Ravel and Debussy, whose music drew inspiration from the impressionist painters. Dutoit chose his 70s composition ‘Timbres, espace, movement, ou La Nuit Etoilee, which demonstrates that the composer is also compelling not derivative of those composers. He cites Van Gogh’s Starry Night, abstractly, one guesses, because the music is a sound Rorschach of moods and visuals.

Dutoit essayed an eerily airless start to Timbres. Metallic f/x and percussive novas flare from nowhere to keep you off-center, but more intriguing are dense orchestral passages sounding like inverted melody lines. A 12- strong cello section fronted, instead of a standard line-up with violins-violas, but this configuration almost vaporous in the first section (Nebuleuse). The cellos weighed heavily in during the second half (Constellations) dramatically with basso bowing reminiscent at points to Bernard Hermann’s film score to Psycho. By the end, the orchestra crystallized the sound and vision, but it seemed coldly academic.

The atmospherics of the Dutilleux are a million miles from the Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No 1, a virtuosic showcase for Jeremy Denk, and he delivered, even with some campy affectations (rapturous facial expressions and dancy arms). Liszt was at risk of listing. But, Denk had moments of sublime engagement with the orchestra, highlighted by muscular trio phrases with principal violin David Kim and cellist Efe Baltacigil. In the central solo section, Denk stripped away any velvet drapery with unfussy technique and authentic passionato.

Dutoit is so adroit going beneath the surface on an easy crowd pleaser like Prokofiev’s ballet score to Romeo and Juliet, giving all parts equal musical space (unlike Riccardo Muti erratic rendition here last winter with the NY Phil). Juliet’s theme as vibrant as the court processional and the tempo precision during Tybalt’s swashbuckling demise, keeping the ballet narrative vivid. Dutoit also igniting a glowing sonority in the strings. The original fab Phils are performing this program in Denk’s neighborhood at Carnegie Hall this week.