January 25, 2020
All the music was Russian, but success was mixed, in the San Antonio Symphony’s concert Jan. 24 in the Tobin Center. Music director Sebastian Lang-Lessing was back on the podium after ceding it to four guest conductors in a row, and the Russian-American pianist Olga Kern, familiar from four previous visits, was back on the piano bench.
Ms. Kern’s vehicle this time was Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, surely the most popular and most overexposed of all piano concertos. The same composer’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture – another exceedingly popular work – closed the concert.
A bit off the beaten path was a set of seven movements from Dmitri Shostakovich’s score for a 1955 Soviet film, The Gadfly – three movements opening the concert, and four opening the second half. Shostakovich composed numerous film scores, starting with The New Babylon, a silent film of 1929. Of all these, only the music for The Gadfly maintained traction, mostly on the strength of a single movement, a Romance featuring a lovely if saccharine violin solo, ably performed here by assistant concertmaster Christine Wang. But also worth hearing are a rollicking Galop, somewhat reminiscent of the one in Kabalevsky’s The Comedians, a festive "Folk Feast” that gave principal clarinet Ilya Shtrenberg an opportunity to shine and astonish, and a Nocturne featuring a mournful melody for cello, superbly played by principal Ken Freudigman. Alas, the requirement of popular appeal left some of the movements wanting in depth. Still, the whole set got a committed, energetic, polished performance, given extra punch by Mr. Lang-Lessing’s customary theatrical flair.
Ms. Kern first appeared with this orchestra in 2001, playing the Schumann concerto a few months after her gold medal triumph in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. She returned to play Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (2016), the Rachmaninoff Second (2017), and the Prokofiev First (2018). In all these performances, she impressed with limitless technique, enormous power, richly sculpted phrasing, and consistently beautiful, bell-like tone.
Her account of the Tchaikovsky First, however, was troubling. Ms. Kern pushed speed and power to new and musically unjustifiable extremes. Her phrasing did not so much shape the lines as distend them, and at forte and above she traded that bell for an anvil. In quieter, more lyrical passages, Ms. Kern reverted to the sensitive form of earlier visits, but too much of this performance settled for mere flash and loudness.
Mr. Lang-Lessing patiently constructed the Romeo and Juliet introduction, with its sense of foreboding, then let ‘er rip in the music representing the violent conflict between the two families – here, extreme speed made musical sense. The whole performance was splendidly put together, with both orchestra and conductor in excellent form.
Mike Greenberg
incident light
respond
Russian – and rushin'
music
Still from the 1955 Soviet film The Gadfy, with music by Shostakovich. Cinematography by Andrey Moskvin. Filmed in “Magicolor."
San Antonio Symphony, SLL, Olga Kern