Translated material
Poems of centers and outskirts
Unusual starts of the symphonic year from the RNO, BSO and NPR
The main orchestras of Moscow open the year with non-trivial programs dedicated to outlying national schools, non-mainstream symphonic trends and almost mysterious composer names.The first to appear on the winter symphony stage in Moscow was Scandinavian music, which was so suitable for the occasion and the weather. Tomorrow at the House of Music the National Philharmonic Orchestra with Vladimir Spivakov will play a concert from its own subscription series “Masterpieces of Scandinavian Music”. His program includes Jean Sibelius (the popular D-minor Violin Concerto with another representative of the Japanese violin school Mayuko Kamio as a soloist and dance intermezzo No. 3 “Pan and Echo”), Edvard Grieg (everything is quite familiar here - the music of two orchestral suites from “ Peer Gynt") and, perhaps, the main intrigue of the evening - Concerto for trombone and orchestra by Launi Grendahl, who served at the beginning of the 19th century as conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra (soloist Alexander Gorbunov).
The program is only one point in the long Scandinavian journey of the NPR, but by the will of calendar coincidences, it may sound like a response to the first program of the Pletnev orchestra in 2010 in the Philharmonic Hall a week ago with the title “Scandinavian Poem”, which fully corresponds not only to the content, but also performance style. We will leave the comparison of the RNO and NPR approaches to harsh poetics to the lot of the lazy listener, but here we note the subtle sense of sophistication of the northern symphonic language in the retelling of Mikhail Pletnev, his orchestra and the impeccable Swedish soloist Camilla Tilling, a stately Valkyrie who captivated the audience with tenderness, precision, beauty and intelligent expressiveness voices and interpretations.
In the Pletnev program, as if covered with frost, which began with one of Pletnev’s favorite encores - Sibelius’s Sad Waltz from the music to A. Järnefelt’s play “Death” (the orchestra knows how to play this miniature especially frosty), Camilla Tilling added seasoned warm colors. She was a soloist in Grieg (Solveig's Song, Lullaby, the not very well-known romance "Dream") and in Sibelius (the symphonic poem Luonnotar for soprano and orchestra, which is not known at all and is surprising in its extraordinary language). To it Pletnev also added an equally spatially expressive poem “The Bard”, thus paying special attention to his beloved Sibelius, in which he was carefully and obediently supported by the orchestra.
The second section was given to the most famous Dane in the world (but not in Russia), Carl Nielsen (by the way, in the NPR programs, Nielsen is listed in the April schedule). RNO once already played his “Fantastic Journey to the Faroe Islands” with Kristian Järvi at the controls. Now Nielsen’s masterful symphonic writing was presented by Pletnev, choosing his Second Symphony “The Four Temperaments”, in each movement of which one of the psychological types is depicted in detail and picturesquely. At the same time, the gloomy “Melancholic,” as expected, turned out to be especially close to the conductor. However, the orchestra portrayed “Phlegmatic” (with its amusing stubbornness in a state of rest, with dull replicas of the winds in a transparent texture) and the lush “Sanguine” with no less quality and pleasure.
The Vladimir Fedoseev Grand Symphony Orchestra also begins the year with a look at the national symphonic outskirts. And if yesterday’s concert of Austrian music with Haydn and Mozart still touched on classical symphonic territories (meanwhile, the names of conductor Martin Kerschbaum and soloist Friedrich Philipp-Pesendorfer with the Concerto for marimba and string orchestra of his own composition gave the program a distinct non-mainstream flavor), then the next program (January 25 ) has deep Polish roots, whimsically intertwined with Russian ones.
With Fedoseyev at the helm, two choirs and soloist Naira Asyatryan (soprano), the BSO will play Weinberg's Sixth Symphony and Szymanowski's Third (Song of the Night).
In general, Moses Weinberg (author of more than twenty symphonies, operas, chamber music, music for films and cartoons, including the film “The Cranes Are Flying” and “Winnie the Pooh”) served as a Soviet composer throughout his long life. But in a somewhat unexpected combination with Szymanowski, the music of Weinberg, a Polish Jew whose entire family died during the war in Warsaw, may appear from a special angle. Just like, perhaps, the music of Karol Szymanowski, who was not only born near Kiev, but also studied in his youth at the Kirovograd school of Gustav Neuhaus.