United Kingdom Williams, Brahms, Wagner: Pavel Kolesnikov (piano), Symphony Orchestra of Indian / Richard Farnes (conductor). Cadogan Corridor, London, 8.12.2023. (MBr)
John Williams – ‘The Imperial March’ from Star Wars
Brahms – Piano Concerto No.2 in B-flat main
Wagner – Suite from Parsifal
Somebody as soon as mentioned that if Mozart had been alive as we speak he can be writing movie music. There are, after all, reasonably a variety of movie composers who’ve written classical music – Miklós Rózsa, André Previn, Bernard Herrmann, Akira Ifukube – and John Williams. The style could be enormously approachable to hearken to (though I as soon as misplaced a guess to call twenty atonal movie scores) however I can’t recall ever going to a classical live performance the place a chunk of music from a John Williams movie rating has been the opening work.
To position a chunk from Star Wars earlier than maybe the best piano concerto ever written is actually novel. I’m not positive it labored for me, nevertheless. There may be some reality that Williams does in ‘The Imperial March’ from The Empire Strikes Again get his inspiration from Gustav Holst, and most clearly from that composer’s ‘Mars’ from The Planets. They share the identical surging, highly effective rhythms, and the identical terrific use of brass. However Williams is significantly extra ‘motif’ oriented – and this does hyperlink extra intently to the work that stuffed the second half of the live performance, an enormous orchestral journey by way of Wagner’s Parsifal – than any inspiration he bought from planets elsewhere. Williams writes enormously vivid, superbly crafted, and immensely putting music – and performed effectively, because it was right here, it creates one other drawback. You simply need to hear extra of it.
The Symphony Orchestra of India clearly get pleasure from taking part in this piece as a result of the taking part in was very good – the brass notably managed and safe with nice tone. It could largely be the final time this was the case, nevertheless.
Johannes Brahms’s B-flat main Piano Concerto started – and continued for fairly a while – in an unfolding arc of impending catastrophe; it grew to become something however that, nevertheless as a full-scale concerto efficiency. The pianist right here, Pavel Kolesnikov, I believe spent a substantial period of time raging by way of all the things that got here earlier than the second topic; however the sudden look of the important thing of F minor, the distant name of that solo horn, modified all the things. The efficiency by no means seemed again after that – and infrequently reached heights of exceptional, penetrating brilliance.
Kolesnikov’s tendency to overstate scale on the Allegro non troppo’s opening, to make the prospers down the keyboard sound enormously loud or stretch climaxes in a gruelling trend weren’t notably in alignment with including to the music’s pressure – reasonably, they had been a distraction. Brahms is in no way understated right here, however the convulsiveness of the taking part in was certainly not what he would have had in thoughts for it. What he did, nevertheless, was the superlative dealing with of passages just like the coda – Kolesnikov was spot on in a transcendental riot of quadruple octaves operating down the keyboard, and a closing triplet of chords that felt magnificently proper.
The Allegro appassionata – principally a scherzo – had a great deal of spring to it, and his willingness to take Brahms’s writing on the proper dynamic was spectacular (the extremely uncommon pianissimo octaves, for instance). Once more, the coda was superlatively finished. The Andante was uneven, and maybe irritating. In what ought to be a reasonably magical motion there was fairly often little or no magic, regardless of Kolesnikov attempting very onerous to make a substantial amount of it and getting little or no again for the appreciable effort he put in. Though the orchestra’s solo cellist right here, Sevak Avanesyan, usually performed with lovely tone it hardly ever felt both haunting or profound; there was little tenderness between the cello and oboe (Richard Hewitt) both. Kolesnikov was significantly extra profitable in mirroring the opposite wind devices within the orchestra – this felt reasonably extra like an actual constellation of stars and fewer just like the yawning hole that existed throughout the chasm between the pianist and cellist as one seemed forlornly in the direction of the opposite.
The Allegretto grazioso had Kolesnikov in full flight, and as gentle as air as he glided across the keyboard with brilliance and agility.
Kolesnikov is actually an attention-grabbing pianist. He may typically be a tad overzealous on the keyboard (though the gorgeous approach he performs is fully gripping to look at); under the keyboard, Kolesnikov is, if not precisely a heavy-footed pedaller, then a distracting wood-thumper. Brahms’s B-flat is tough to carry off in most circumstances; this efficiency was, I believe, ultimately one thing of a minor miracle.
Within the second half of the live performance we had only a single work – Wagner’s Orchestral Suite from Parsifal, constructed by Andrew Gourley in 2018. Over the many years conductors have performed orchestral this music to various levels – Eugene Ormandy maybe extra extensively than most, recording virtually 50-minutes of the music with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1956. Leopold Stokowski made his personal Symphonic Synthesis, though this was solely of Act III. Earlier than Gourley made his personal development (which he recorded final 12 months with the London Philharmonic), probably the most full one had been finished within the early Nineteen Nineties by the Dutch musicologist Henk de Vlieger and, if reminiscence recollects, this one differs barely from Gourley’s – there’s, I believe, no Act III Prelude in de Vlieger, for instance. Each Gourley and de Vlieger don’t prepare the music in chronological order, however in essence that is barely related in a live performance efficiency when the development of the suite is as successfully finished because it usually is in each variations.
I’ve largely thought of Wagner’s Parsifal the composer’s best opera. Nevertheless it poses clear issues, notably for conductors. The opening prelude to Parsifal can survive an inordinately sluggish tempo provided that it has the fitting conductor who could make it do one thing else. Alternatively, a usually swift tempo, or one that’s precisely on the tempo, can barely survive in any respect if it really sounds as whether it is by some means caught within the trenches or wading by way of mud. Richard Farnes distinctly falls into this latter group. So excruciatingly sluggish did this really feel I questioned if I’d make my prepare residence the identical night; and but, once I checked out my watch it had been no quicker nor slower than a median efficiency.
Farnes may, nevertheless, take into account himself fortunate as a result of for all that mud I wanted to scrape off my boots I did reasonably discover the prelude reasonably involving versus a nap fest. It additionally turned out to be one thing of an aberration as a result of virtually all the things else right here moved extra shortly (reasonably extra shortly than Gourley takes in his personal recording, in truth). Even when there have been some insecurities within the brass, it was the string taking part in of the Symphony Orchestra of India that was the actually compelling factor right here. Wagner desires – and desires – richness of string tone, and we bought it right here, particularly from some very darkish and formidable double basses. The ‘Transformation Scene’ was very good. Parsifal himself richly noticed with an ominous darkness. It may need been simple to have made all of this simply sound overwhelmingly heavy-handed; as an alternative, Farnes made this orchestral Parsifal gripping, mighty and but growlingly highly effective. Amfortas shone with brightness on the finish. Pure radiance, I believe – and simply over forty minutes of Wagnerian indulgence.
Cadogan Corridor usually performs to barely smaller orchestras than the Symphony Orchestra of India – it was actually good to have seven double basses than the extra regular 5, for instance. They’re a splendid sounding orchestra and this modern program confirmed that off to spectacular impact.
Marc Bridle
