| Mikhail Pletnev played with death The new program of the Russian National Orchestra, played recently in the Great Hall of the Conservatory, cannot be denied its integrity. A single theme holds it together with such conceptual strength that you can’t even play an entertaining encore later. What kind of encore is there when there is only death all around? Yes, not simple, but very late romantic: Liszt, Richard Strauss and, of course, Wagner.
It would seem that snot and tears are guaranteed in such a program. In this case, musicians usually compete in pre-decadent feelings and exaggerated emotional twists. Although there is no point in competing here, because the winner has long been known anyway - Valery Gergiev.
Perhaps that is why the main participants of the concert - the dry, skeptical pianist Mikhail Pletnev and the radiant conductor Dmitry Liss - took a different, completely unconventional path. Both of them did not scare so much as they made them laugh and surprised the audience - each due to their capabilities and the rehearsal time allotted.
Liss got better music: the introduction and death of Isolde from the corresponding Wagner opera and Strauss's most famous symphonic poem, Don Giovanni. The balancing act of Straussian scores is a severe test for the orchestra. Slightly spoiling the overall result with errors in the winds and the fluidity of the strings, RNO coped with the loving character with a B. Wagner, on the contrary, is a solo for a conductor, by which one can evaluate his technique, outlook and worldview. The young and handsome Yekaterinburg resident Lissa Wagner turned out to be a real intellectual: luxurious and brilliant vulgarity is bashfully disguised, the gilding has faded, the velvet has become frayed, the pond with swans is covered with duckweed. There is no overlap of feelings, for each episode there is one modest climax - however, very competently constructed.
Soloist Pletnev got Liszt - with all his delicious diversity, noisy concert performance and sweet narrow-mindedness. As a result, it was Liszt (Second Piano Concerto and paraphrase of the Danse Macabre) who became the main character of the evening. However, of course, not Liszt - Pletnev. A common rule: the worse the music, the more noticeable the class of the performer - this is exactly the case. Pletnev got even with Liszt handsomely - only the bones cracked. Chewed it and spat it out. Instead of an assorted list of gifts, he presented something incredibly fresh, unexpected and even intellectual. As if this is not a Liszt concerto at all, but at least a late Beethoven sonata. He sold the first and best four notes (piano in unison with double basses) of a cheerful paraphrase on the theme Dies irae as if it were a real masterpiece. Reluctantly playing precise dizzying passages, Pletnev held the listener's attention from the first to the last note. And it was precisely attention, and not the circus admiration usual for Liszt’s music. Ekaterina BIRYUKOVA |
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