Something to please everybody: a music review by Fraser Beath McEwing
After a thorough Sibelius soaking from the previous Emirates Master Series concert, it was refreshing to return to the more familiar variety of Glinka, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky for last night’s SSO concert.
Han-na Chang
Not only that, but we were treated to the appearance of two outstanding visiting musicians in South Korean conductor Han-Na Chang and the return of Uzbek pianist Behzod Abduraimov.
Glinka’s overture to his opera Ruslan and Ludmilla, which opened the program, has become far more popular than the opera itself. Lasting only about five furious minutes, it provides the fiddlers, especially, with a high-speed warmup and the audience with a feeling of optimism. In order to get the best out of the semiquavers, a high degree of accuracy is called for and, to its credit, that’s what the SSO delivered under the whipping baton of Han-Na Chang. She originally made her mark as a virtuoso cellist but then, at age 24, felt an insatiable urge to build an all-consuming conducting career – in the manner of Mstislav Rostropovich. Now at 41 she joins the growing number of female conductors, although few have a comparable list of appointments and appearances with famous orchestras.
The audience reacted very favourably to Han-Na Chang’s joyous conducting style. Always animated and without using a score, she communicated intimately with her players, never afraid to let a rest hang in the air or a climax have its head.
The fiddlers having recovered from Glinka, it was time to wheel out the Steinway for Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No.2 with fast-rising soloist Behzod Abduraimov. He’d blasted his way to prominence via Prokofiev’s third piano concerto when he played it to win the London International Piano Competition in 2009. But the second, which he played last night, is considered to be much more demanding – to the point of being unplayable except for pianists with superlative techniques. It is almost as though Prokofiev, who was a world class piano soloist as well as composer, threw down the gauntlet to those who would dare follow him into public performance. He premiered the work himself in 1913, but not before the original score had been accidentally burned and had to be reconstructed from the composer’s memory.
The concerto fits four movements into its 35 minutes rather than the conventional three. It opens benignly enough until it hits the cadenza in the first movement at which point it becomes incendiary. This is where and Behzod Abduraimov took charge, demonstrating his blistering technique and deep understanding of the often-perplexing twists and turns of the score. He interpreted the Prokofiev from a swirling romantic viewpoint rather than clinical clarity. That suited the spirit of the work, even if, during the excitement of the first movement, the piano was a tad ahead of the orchestra on a few occasions. But there was no disputing Abduraimov’s astonishing power and projection nor his ability to pull back to quiet, contemplative tenderness when needed.
Tchaikovsky’s three last symphonies have welded themselves firmly onto the peaks of public popularity. The Fifth, which we heard last night, was first performed on 17 November 1888 at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, with Tchaikovsky conducting. It has had many Australian outings, beginning with a radio broadcast in 1941, not to mention its long-past assistance to Paul Hogan in flogging Winfield cigarettes. I suspect that the Tchaikovsky symphony was the reason for last night’s full house.
Familiar though the Symphony No.5, Op.64 is, it leaves plenty of room for creative conducting largely because the scoring is so straightforward. Tchaikovsky’s output has been questioned in the past for being light on scoring complexity.
The symphony really set itself up in the opening bars where Han-Na Chang laid a foundation of tragedy to provide a springboard for the contrasting grand statements that came later.
The second movement, marked Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza, was introduced by a breathtaking horn solo before moving into the well-known theme that stays in the mind long after the performance is over. The big Tchaikovsky orchestra (seven bull fiddles, no less) made the most of the opportunity to uplift, inspire and overwhelm.
After the third movement presented its settling waltz, the fourth movement (Finale) returned to grandiose mode as Han-Na Chang stoked the emotional boiler and upped the tempo to bring the symphony to a fiery conclusion.
Fraser Beath McEwing is a pianist, commentator on classical music performance and is a founding member of The theme & Variations Foundation which assists talented young Australian pianists. His professional background is in journalism, editing and publishing. He is also the author of five novels and a Governor of the Sir Moses Montefiore Home. A body of his work can be found on www.frasersblography.com
