Thursday’s successful concert of the Brno Philharmonic in Besední dům was sure to please virtually everyone, listeners of different ages and tastes. And the enthusiasm was felt in the hall, even though the piano was sometimes played with the entire width of the forearm.
The dramaturgical intention of the evening also had an unusual depth and breadth for Brno, such that no slogan or title may capture. Therefore, the official name of the evening Views into the Past does not by far express all that actually happened. Those are in fact mere words, but here music talks, for which, as we know, words are ridiculous. The architecture of the programme took advantage of the fact that, apart from composers old and new, there is one more, unique to a great extent, which defies both of the two. The dispute between intellect and creative fervour in the composer Alfred Garriyevich Schnittke was unable to result in a specific solution to the issue of creative style. The boy Alfred's immensely rich experience with music, when thanks to his father's work in two post-war years he was allowed to live in Vienna and attend local performances and concerts, made him firmly attached to music. His varied origin (Russian, German and Jewish) made it also difficult for him to become a regular herald of the national musical tradition; he was always looking for a broader context, a depth that no-one had ever looked into before. Several times his reflections led him into spiritual spheres. He eventually inclined to the synthesis (syncretism) of all styles and periods as if he ruled over them. In a few words, with Schnittke we never know what it will be like – we can merely be sure we have never experienced anything like that.
His Concerto for Piano and Strings is literally stunning and its effect was emphasized at the beginning by the insertion of Bach's ten-minute harpsichord concerto BWV 1056 (played on the piano in accordance with common practice). The birth of this concertante form resonated in symbiosis as well as contrasting with Schnittke's half-hour one-movement colossus, in which unpredictable complexity took turns with naive simplicity, painful noise mass with silent emptiness and the weight of life with childish joy. This is not just a view of the past, it is the past engraved in stone with a jackhammer. The next half brought two more views back in time: Ravel and Stravinsky. Both of them are remarkably politer, removing the intestines from the music of the old good masters and filling them with their own stuffing – capricious, sometimes even subversive, but still pretty amusing. Ravel inscribed his homage to F. Couperin symbolically on the tombstone, just to honour at the same time his friends fallen in the raging Great War. The prophet of Neoclassicism Stravinsky often liked to put on some of his old colleagues’ disguise, Pergolesi in this case, to eventually explode out of it. The imaginary harmony of the old and the new seemed to be successful even in the audience in the full range of its preferences and generations.
The evening was difficult and treacherous for the soloists, including those from the orchestra, although it also gave them a chance to stand out. In the second half of the concert, this opportunity was used in a special manner by the young oboist Marcela Mrázová. She was supported by the obvious empathy of the orchestral players, and above all by the spontaneous South American conductor Ilyich Rivas, who had an obvious weakness for her solos and gave them a generous amount of space. She managed with utter ease the runs in Ravel's Tomb, as if practicing a mere C-major scale. She excelled in Stravinsky's Pulcinella in many ways: as a mistress of lyrical cantilena, as well as dramatic performance. She became something like the second soloist of the evening, as she took over the second half, and it can be assumed that this concert will become a milestone in her career. The first relevant mention of her dates back to a 2014 newspaper, where she commented on her expectations from the newly formed youth philharmonic Academy, which she was supposed to enter in September 2014: "We will study orchestra parts along with the philharmonic. And once in a while perform with the orchestra." She enthusiastically speaks with a journalist about her demanding instrument and adds: "I take it as another experience; should an opportunity come up, I would be glad to become a member of the philharmonic." I myself saw her for the first time at this Brno Philharmonic concert; she is not a member of the orchestra according to its website, but on the other hand we can find her as a member of the orchestra at the Brno’s National Theatre. After the trumpeter František Kříž, this means at least the second successful arrival of an exceptional young talent in the opera orchestra from an engagement with the Brno Philharmonic, without, however, the philharmonic having found an equivalent replacement. Will anybody think about what caused it?
The first half was dominated by the charismatic Russian pianist Polina Osetinskaya. Belonging to the Russian school, she took Bach's Concerto in F minor in a very emphatic fashion: she perfectly articulated each tone and enabled it to sound like a bell, but did not exaggerate the pedalling. She reminded me of Sviatoslav Richter (surprisingly also by playing from the score), but also someone like Glenn Gould. With the exception of the instrument used and the generally high dynamics, Osetinskaya might agree in the agogics with a performing school focusing on a historically learned approach. In Schnittke, however, a lot more is needed than just technique and the right idea. Crushing courage, hardness of expression and firm belief in the correctness of the unusual interpretive intent are called for here. Osetinskaya appears to be an excellent successor to Schnittke’s first performers – the pianist Victoria Postnikova and her husband, conductor Gennadiy Rozhdestvensky. She in fact led the production by herself, which was also due to the occasional inattention of the conductor who was not following her too much with his eyes. She took control of the whole area and it was only a pity that the lighting was not at least partly dimmed. The overall effect of her expression is certainly given by the score, which requires great performing individuality; however, she was capable of using the given chance to the maximum and above expectations.
As an encore, there was the famous, and especially in Russia, very popular Siloti’s mock-romantic makeover of Bach's Preludium in E minor from the first volume of his Well-tempered Piano (BWV 855). Osetinskaya took advantage of the clear phrasing for an interesting effect: she played the "endless" melody in sixteenth notes more and more quietly while increasing the volume of the arpeggio chord accompaniment. The melody stood out nevertheless, yet not by dynamics, but by impressive rendition and flawless keystrokes.
The Venezuelan-born Ilyich Rivas, a descendant of an old conductors’ clan, will be celebrating only his twenty-fourth birthday next month. He grew up with his parents in the United States from his early childhood, and some episodes of his life recall the fate of wunderkind. He is said to have conducted the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as a professional as early as at the age of 16; nowadays the list of his collaborating ensembles takes up two paragraphs. It is necessary to repeat that the Brno Philharmonic had never before had the opportunity to work with such excellent conductors. Should the situation, God forbid, worsen once again, the names such as Scaglione, Buribayev, Liebreich, or Rivas in particular will be remembered as a golden age.
Despite his age, Rivas is a very singular personality, perhaps even thanks to his youth. He manages to awaken in musicians an extraordinary enthusiasm and also a good mood; even those I had never seen look anything but dour at concerts for the past 20 years were smiling. Rivas achieves this not only with his precise gesture, but also his expressive mimic. Most of the time he has a broad smile, blown cheeks, he controls the musicians with his eyes, giving them all kinds of grins, moreover looking most of the time like the actor Pavel Liška. It's not just about fun, but about the ability to gain respect and, above all, intense attention. Probably already during the rehearsal process, Rivas managed to eradicate all the tendencies of the musicians not to stand out, unfortunately so frequent in Brno. For all instruments, he bet on the maximum sharpness of expression. Consequently, the concert master Pavel Wallinger sounded in Stravinsky as though he played the first violin in the Janáček’s Quartets, being overall very sharp and consistent. Even the introductory Bach was quite fresh, he managed to suppress the vibrato and partially mobilise the mini-pictorial agogics. Schnittke was well-managed by the orchestra, no disturbing moments were encountered, however, with the significant entries of the individual strings, the slintered acoustics of Besední dům would require a stronger players’ emphasis.
All that sound was excessive for the subtle Besední dům. The top acoustics engineers, who are heading to Brno to design the new concert hall, could take a side job and suggest an easily simply dismountable acoustic arrangement for orchestral concerts in the Besední dům. In Ravel's volatile movements of Le Tombeau de Couperin, Rivas was the orchestra’s good servant, giving exquisite entries and adjusting the sound to solo appearances, in which the clarinet player Lukáš Daňhel also excelled. Generally, he opted for high pace. Pulcinella, just like all other Stravinsky’s compositions, is distinct and severe in its effects and nothing can be done but stand up to the demanding and eccentric interpretation finesses. Here the whole band started to rejoice, with brass instruments getting stronger for the first time. Stravinsky’s stunning geyser increased until the electrifying end, when Rivas himself got carried away by the swirl of Pulcinella capriccios and played a very good puppet of his own. A cultural shock, however, had to be experienced by the conductor during the final applause, when none of the five bassists watched him nor stood up, so they could not be praised in front of all even after repeated attempts. Even the concert master gazed into the audience, but eventually he managed to respond. It was a truly star-filled evening full of rage and ultimately non-pathetic joy. We should not forget to mention the dramaturgy that was at the beginning of this great success.
The “Miscellanea” column: The Brno Philharmonic’s ill kept and generally neglected website was down again for several hours on Friday; hence, casual walk-up visitors could not even know about the concert.
Written from the concert on 4 May 2017.
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