San Antonio Symphony, Camerata San Antonio
Tchaikovsky, from communal to personal
May 2, 2011The first weekend of the Tchaikovsky Festival, initiated by the San Antonio Symphony and joined by other musical groups, turned out to be a major success on every level, with extraordinary performances cheered wildly by large and diverse audiences. There were even shouts of “Viva” among the bravos.
The orchestra, under music director Sebastian Lang-Lessing, offered the Second, Third and Fourth Symphonies and the Piano Concerto No. 1, spread across two concerts on April 29 and 30 in the Majestic Theater. Camerata San Antonio presented two chamber works, the String Quartet No. 1 and the Piano Trio in A Minor, on May 1. British pianist Freddy Kempf was the powerful soloist in the concerto and the trio.
It was illuminating to hear the Second, Third and Fourth symphonies in juxtaposition. The Second, subtitled “Little Russian” for its Ukrainian folk character, represents the high water mark of Tchaikovsky’s early nationalist period. The music is effortlessly tuneful and charming, though not without melancholic shadings. It is essentially public music, expressive of a community. The Third continues in the same vein, but there are signs that the vein has been played out. While the Second is lean (thanks to a major revision years after the premiere), the Third is fat and ungainly. There are plenty of wonderful details, but they don’t cohere into a compelling story. At times, such as the merely dutiful development of the first movement, Tchaikovsky just didn't seem interested.
The Fourth enters new territory. In the turbulent, soul baring first movement, Tchaikovsky is no longer speaking for a community but for himself. This is an intensely personal testimony, expressing the senses, the viscera, the body. The remaining movements return to the public sphere, but in ways that are tempered by the private.
Mr. Lang-Lessing comes with a considerable international reputation as an opera conductor. We have not yet had an opportunity to hear him in that role in San Antonio, but his leadership in the Fourth Symphony indicated a keen sense of narrative structure and theatrical effect. In the first movement, he made the composer’s struggles his own: This was a performance of rare empathy, another attribute of the best opera conductors.
Throughout these concerts, Mr. Lang-Lessing’s customary clarity, attention to detail and sense of line were in full flower. The orchestra, far from seeming overburdened by the preparation for two different programs on two consecutive nights, was playing at top form. The strings pumped out a full, rich sound that maintained its beauty even in the loudest passages, and the extended pizzicato section that opens the scherzo of the Fourth Symphony was delivered with complete precision. Virtuoso solo performances came from every section.
Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto is doubtless the most familiar concerto in the repertoire, and everyone knows how it goes. Mr. Kempf’s performance said, in effect, “Wait a minute. Why must it always be the same old same old? Maybe it can also go like this.”
He gravitated to extremes of dynamics, tempi and rhythmic definition. Low-register fortissimo chords exploded with left-hand power that Rocky Balboa might envy. In an unaccompanied passage near the middle of the first movement, he played the furious initial octave passage at blinding speed, a good deal faster than the parallel orchestral passage that preceded, yet transformed instantly into searching, introspective poetry for the dolce sequel. The performance might be faulted for being sometimes too fussy, sometimes too nervous, and for not hanging together quite as well as it should. But every moment was thrilling.
His encore, Franz Liszt’s transcription of the Leibestod” from Richard Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” brought out a wonderfully nuanced color palette and, at the end, dreamy, billowing phrasing.
For all the willfulness he showed in the concerto, Mr. Kempf proved to be an admirable team player when he joined Camerata regulars Ertan Torgul (violin) and Kenneth Freudigman (cello) in the A Minor Piano Trio on May 1 in Travis Park United Methodist Church. Tchaikovsky’s score often puts the piano in the foreground, and Kempf played those passages with huge size and intensity. But he also was fully attentive and even, when appropriate, deferential to his partners, robust and muscular musicians themselves. The performance was a knockout.
The Camerata concert opened with a vigorous and polished account of the First String Quartet by violinists Karen Stiles and Matthew Zerweck, violist Emily Frudigman and cellist David Mollenauer.
Mr. Kempf extends his residency through May 7, when he plays the Piano Concerto No. 2 with the orchestra. The Sixth Symphony closes that program, and the First and Fifth are to be played on May 6. (Conspicuously missing is the vast and underperformed “Manfred” Symphony, which contains some of Tchaikovsky’s most arresting music. Mr. Lang-Lessing said he is saving that for another season.) Then on May 8 in McAllister Auditorium, Musical Bridges Around the World gives a program of songs and opera excerpts (mainly from “Queen of Spades”), and the Ensemble Barynya presents a sampler of Russian and Ukrainian dance, including two numbers from Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker.”
Mike
Greenberg
