Yesterday evening, the Mannes Orchestra gave its first concert of the season at Alice Tully Hall. The students performed a predominantly Russian program that featured works by Rimsky-Korsakov, Prokofiev and Stravinsky. Somewhat incongruously, an overture by American composer Samuel Barber was also included at the beginning of the second half.
The program opened with Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Overture, Op. 36 (1887-1888). The work displays the composer's mystical bent at its most intense and is firmly in the tradition of Russian Romanticism. As was the case with the music of its dedicatees, Mussorgsky and Borodin (both prominent members of "The Five"), it was a deliberate attempt on the composer's part to demonstrate in his work a strong nationalist influence. Though not particularly religious in nature - it could hardly be termed "sacred music" - the work was one of the very few to incorporate elements of the Orthodox liturgy. According to Rimsky-Korsakov himself, the piece sought to capture:
"... "the legendary and heathen aspect of the holiday, and the transition from the solemnity and mystery of the evening of Passion Saturday to the unbridled pagan-religious celebrations of Easter Sunday morning".
Conducted by David Hayes, the orchestra was here at its very best as it gave a rousing rendition that was among the finest I've heard by any ensemble.
The next work Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 19 (1915-1917). It was not until six years after the piece had been completed that it received its 1923 premiere in Paris when it was conducted by Serge Koussevitsky in a concert that also featured Stravinsky conducting his own Octet, a highly popular work that in the end completely overshadowed Prokofiev's opus. The concerto is a calm and in parts almost gentle work. Nevertheless it is a thoroughly modern composition and possesses a complex structure that belies the simplicity of its sound. Prokofiev took his inspiration here from a number of contemporary sources. As I had mentioned in an earlier post, it was after having heard Szymanowski's Mythes that Prokofiev asked Paul Kochański to consult with him on the the present work. The soloist at this concert was Yada Lee, the winner of the 2014 Mannes Concerto Competition, who showed herself in this performance a formidable violinist who remained in complete control of her material throughout the three movements.
In the second half, after an unnecessarily long introduction by student conductor Nell Flanders, the orchestra performed Barber's The School for Scandal Overture, Op. 5 (1931). However anomalous its appearance on this program, this a major piece of American music and deserves to be heard more often. It is not actually an overture in the traditional sense but rather a single piece that drew its inspiration from Sheridan's eighteenth century satire. In keeping with its source, the overture has a bright brittle sound that is quite attractive. Barber was only 21 and still a student at Curtis Music Institute when he wrote the piece. It was his first work for orchestra and immediately launched his reputation as one of the last century's preeminent American composers.
The evening ended with Stravinsky's Firebird Suite No. 2 (1919), the best known of the three suites the composer extracted from his 1910 ballet. To my mind, none of the suites really does justice to the original work from which they were extracted. Of them all, I prefer the first, the 1910, which is the most faithful to its source. The full ballet, which I heard performed earlier this season at Carnegie Hall by the Berlin Philharmonic, is a magical work. It famously marked Stravinsky's debut with the Ballets Russes and made him an overnight sensation throughout Europe. While it pays tribute to the Romantic tradition so well represented in Rimsky-Korsakov's overture at the beginning of the program, it also anticipates the radical rhythmic innovations that would appear only three years later in Le Sacre du printemps.
The Mannes Orchestra is probably the best student ensemble now performing in New York City. Its members displayed at last night's concert not only an extremely high level of talent but also complete dedication to giving the best performance possible of the works at hand. Mannes itself deserves a great deal of credit for continuing its policy of free concerts at a time when other schools have begun to charge exorbitant and wholly unwarranted admission prices.
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