November 27, 2015

Bach, Air on the G String

Haydn, Symphony No. 30 ‘Alleluja’

Bartók, Piano Concerto No. 2

Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 1 ‘Winter Daydreams’

Andris Nelsons, Boston Symphony Orchestra

Yefim Bronfman, piano

Symphony Hall, Boston

An outstanding first exposure to many of these works and Boston’s marvelous Symphony Hall! I got seats in the very last back row of the second balcony, almost flush against the wall. Priced at $74, I thought this was rather expensive, but the agent on the phone claimed it had the best sound in the hall, and the sound was pretty damn good.

The program only had the Haydn, Bartók, and Tchaikovsky written on it, but in memory of recently deceased former BSO concertmaster Joseph Silverstein, Bach’s Air on the G String had been added to the program for this weekend’s series of concerts. Played by a small fraction of the entire orchestra, this lilting tune from the Baroque master was wonderfully played, a rare treat to hear in a modern concert hall. My familiarity of the piece is very limited (I think I only heard it once before at a concert at St Martin-in-the-Fields two years ago), but I enjoyed hearing it and will definitely seek out a recording for my digital collection later.

The next work, Haydn’s 30^th Symphony, is also a very rarely programmed piece. BSO’s program notes proclaimed that it had not been performed by the BSO since 1977 under the baton of Seiji Ozawa, almost thirty years ago. The subtitle of the work comes from the first movement’s borrowing of a melody from a Gregorian chant (namely, Alleluja), and this reference is quite prominent in the first movement (although I had never heard this work or the Gregorian chant before). As the program notes went on to explain, music of this time (1765, namely) was not traditionally praised for originality or expressivity, but Haydn, with his imaginative and creative spirit, managed to keep his patrons pleased and keep a steady job under the patronage system while also creating enduring and original musical works. At a fairly short fourteen minutes, the symphony does not have especially memorable motifs, but adheres dutifully to the standards of the Classical era and serves as decent background music. Despite a good performance, I won’t be hunting for recordings of this one.

The piano concerto that followed was the only piece on the program which I had heard before recently. I had seen this very same piano concerto, Bartók’s 2^nd, performed by Yuja Wang and the San Francisco Symphony in San Francisco in August, just a few months ago. At the time, I had been (naturally) impressed with Wang’s playing but found the music to be tough, almost impenetrable because of its complexity, not helped by the fact that that had been my first proper exposure to Bartók. Now, having been to a live performance of Bartók’s 2^nd violin concerto with Gil Shaham and the Philadelphia Orchestra (which was magnificent, by the way, see my review on that) as well as a performance of his viola concerto with the NYU Symphony (which I didn’t enjoy quite as much), I understood the composer a little better and had learnt to see the beauty under the hammering rhythms and dense orchestration. Yefim Bronfman proved to be a masterful pianist, accentuating dynamic contrasts quite splendidly. BSO’s skilled timpanist lived up to his part, accompanying the piano quite well and with the proper intensity required of the part. And of course, the brass (and woodwinds, I guess) were on point in the first movement, a crucial section where the strings are curiously tacet.

After a spectacular first movement, the second movement began with muted strings playing dreamy chords reminiscent of Ives’s The Unanswered Question. The piano came in with its Bartók-esque quirky melody, the presto section came and went quickly as the strings returned to close the movement.

The third movement was quite impressive, as Andris Nelsons coaxed the entire orchestra into a furious frenzy of musical chaos. At the final note, the audience was instantaneous in voicing their appreciation, and Bronfman made several re-entrances onto the stage for multiple bows before sitting down to play an encore, a rather simple piece, likely by Chopin. Although I didn’t recognize the exact work, it sounded like a Chopin waltz, but  it was, quite frankly, underwhelming after hearing Bartók’s fierce piano concerto. A more virtuosic show of talent may have been a better crowd-pleaser.

After a twenty-minute intermission where I splurged on some delightful napkins with musical notes inscribed on them from the Symphony Store, I settled back in my seat for the first time I would hear Tchaikovsky First Symphony. I am quite familiar with his Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Symphonies, and have listened to multiple recordings of all of them, but outside of those works I do not know Tchaikovsky very well. I was not at all disappointed or unimpressed with the First Symphony. Subtitled Winter Daydreams, I expected to hear some Russian folk song depicting a pastoral scene, but these pre-associations left my mind as I let Tchaikovsky’s trademark lyricism spill out of the BSOs luscious string section’s playing.

All four movements were terrific, with just the right amount of rubato and some judicious tempi from Maestro Nelsons. I looked back in the middle of one of the inner movements and quite nearly leapt out of my seat when I saw Seiji Ozawa standing almost directly behind me, watching from the walkway behind the very last row of seats (the row I was sitting in). I was too dumbfounded to fumble for a pen and ask for his autograph, but it was mid-performance so I didn’t want to make a scene anyway. He looked on for a few seconds, impassive, and walked away. Anyway, back to the concert. After three movements of tacet trombones (this may have been the only thing I didn’t like), Toby Oft led his section beautifully in the finale. The work closed in a glorious and exuberant splendor not unlike the end of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, and I was instantly on my feet applauding away. Thinking back to a discussion I had online with other classical music nerds about how a conductor could make or break a piece of music for a first-time listener of the work, I concluded that Nelsons had done his job correctly with this piece: made a convincing enough interpretation to make me a new fan of Tchaikovsky’s First.