On Wednesday evening I went to hear the Mariinsky Orchestra perform under the baton of its Music Director Valery Gergiev on the second evening of its two-night engagement at Carnegie Hall. On this occasion, the program was rather eclectic and featured works by Strauss and Prokofiev as well as the New York premiere of a piano concerto by Daniil Trifonov who appeared here in the dual roles of composer and pianist.
The program opened with Strauss's tone poem, Don Juan, Op. 20 (1888) in E major. To be honest, I've never greatly cared for Strauss's tone poems. They belong to the first part of the composer's career when, filled with hubris, he nustakenly thought he was leading German music in an entirely new direction just as Wagner had done before him. But the belief was illusory. For one thing, Strauss did not invent the tone poem, only the catchy label. He had actually been preceded in his endeavor not only by Liszt but by Beethoven as well. After all, what is the Symphony No. 6, the Pastoral, if not a tone poem in all but name? More importantly, the tone poem was a musical dead end rather than a new beginning. By the time Strauss composed the last of them in 1915, the bloated Eine Alpensinfonie, Mahler and Stravinsky had already revolutionized Western music with their modernism. As musical tastes changed, the tone poem was revealed to be an anachronism, no more than a curious holdover from the nineteenth century. In retrospect, the arc of Don Juan's music parallels the course of Strauss's own career - it begins with a loud fanfare only to die away softly at the end.
The next work was the New York premiere of Trifonov's Piano Concerto (2014), a neo-romantic work that tried very hard throughout to conjure the spirit of Rachmaninoff. I was less than impressed with it myself. This was music that took itself much too seriously, not least in the stormy piano part. It did, however, provide Mr. Trifonov several opportunities to display his considerable talent at the keyboard. In an earlier post I described Schumann's early piano quartet in C minor as "overwrought," and the same description could just as well apply to the present work. Schumann did go on to compose some of the repertoire's finest chamber works, however, and it's just as possible that Mr. Trifonov will also move forward to far greater accomplishments.
After intermission the program concluded with the work I had really come to hear, Prokofiev's Symphony No. 6 in E-flat minor, Op. 111 (1947). I'm certainly not the first to note that this is a very dark work indeed. Prokofiev himself referred to "the painful results of war" when discussing its mood. As in his earlier Violin Sonata in F minor, there is a clear sense of hysteria lurking just behind the music; it threatens to break forth into the open at any moment and overwhelm both musicians and audience If one listens closely enough, one can hear the mocking laughter of the graveyard. It would be naive, though, to suppose this mood was only the result of war, terrible as World War II was for the Russian populace. Much of the work's unease has to do with the ferocity of Stalin's purges that continued unabated throughout the war years and even afterwards. There's a sense of disbelief that one should have survived the hardships of a world war only to face a postwar reality that's no less horrifying in its inhumanity. In this sense, the political censors were perfectly correct in condemning both the work and its composer. The symphony is a powerful indictment of the entire Soviet system as it reveals a nation reeling from psychological trauma that can never completely heal.
Valery Gergiev is at his best when conducting works from the Russian repertoire, and he did a tremendous job with the Prokofiev. This is a work where everything happens beneath the surface; it needs a sure hand to bring forth all its nuanced psychological implications. Hearing it performed so well by such a great orchestra on Wednesday evening was a truly rewarding experience.
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