Carnegie Hall: St. Petersburg Orchestra Performs Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff

Saturday evening's concert at Stern Auditorium featured a program of all Russian music by Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff as performed, appropriately enough, by the St. Petersburg Orchestra under the direction of Yuri Temirkanov.

The evening began with Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 63 (1935) with Julia Fischer as soloist.  Written for Robert Soetens, the style of the work is neoclassical in the Stravinsky manner.  Its "international" character, including the use of castanets and Spanish accents for its Madrid premiere, is often commented on and was addressed by the composer himself:

"The variety of places in which [Violin Concerto No.2] was written is a reflection of the nomadic concert-tour existence I led at that time: The principal theme of the first movement was written in Paris, the first theme of the second movement in Voronezh, the orchestration I completed in Baku, while the first performance was given in Madrid in December 1935."

In any event, I found the piece extremely spare and austere and not in the style usually associated with Prokofiev.  To my mind, only the ending showed any real passion.  Here the soloist played wildly in 5/4 time in a coda whose ending was marked tumultuoso.  As if to make up for the restraint displayed through most of the concerto, Ms. Fischer later played as an encore the final movement of Hindemith's Solo Violin Sonata in G minor, Op. 11, No. 6, a fiery piece and one filled with sufficient flourishes to provide the violinist an opportunity to display her virtuosity.

After intermission, the program concluded with a performance of the complete version of Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27 (1907).  This is a lush romantic piece that sounds to me totally different in structure from every other symphony in the repertoire and at times seems more to resemble a film score as its music swirls about the audience.  As the program notes:

"... the Second Symphony is an expansive summation of Rachmaninoff's early style.  The second subject of the finale and the main theme of the slow movement are two of the most extended tunes he ever wrote, and the soulful opening movement is a continual stream of brooding melody."

The work is also famous for being Rachmaninoff's second attempt at symphonic writing after the disastrous reception of his First Symphony in 1895.  Although he had by then composed his Second Piano Concerto, following a long period of psychoanalysis and hypnosis, Rachmaninoff still needed seclusion in which to work out his ideas and so resigned as conductor of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and moved with his family to Dresden.  The Symphony No. 2 proved a great success and still remains one of the composer's most popular works.  It was through this symphony that I first came to hear and appreciate Rachmaninoff's music and eventually to realize that he was indeed one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century.