A Russian Experience

I first began thinking seriously about the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic after reading Anthony Tommasini's glowing account of their performance at Carnegie Hall on October 30. From his very first paragraph it was clear that what Tommasini had enjoyed the most was the uniqueness of the experience:

Classical music is supposedly in a period when national traditions and performance styles are losing their distinctions in an increasingly homogenized musical world. Don’t tell that to the Russian conductor Yuri Temirkanov and the players of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra.

The program he described began with the overture to Le Nozze di Figaro, following by Beethoven's violin concerto with German soloist Julia Fischer. Only after the intermission did Temirkanov venture into Russian territory with Sergei Prokofiev's fifth symphony. Here is Tommasini's summary of the non-Russian portion:

Whatever the case, I have never heard a performance of Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro” Overture quite like this one. The tempo was superfast, the energy nonstop. The way the violins played the quiet, scurrying opening, the 16th-notes were so hushed and blurred, the theme came across as a slightly ominous rumble. In this context the sudden bursts of fortissimo exuberance were almost shocking.

In Beethoven’s Violin Concerto the soloist was Julia Fischer, a brilliant, musically insightful young German violinist. You might have thought that bringing a German artist into the mix would have diminished the Russian-ness of the performance. But Ms. Fischer entered completely into the spirit of Mr. Temirkanov’s approach.

It is very rare these days that a review leaves me feeling as if I had missed out on something important; but, when I realized that this same program was scheduled for performance at Davies Symphony Hall last night, I knew I had to hear it. It took a bit to persuade my wife, since it was a "school night;" but I managed to prevail. I can now state that I have absolutely no regrets about my spontaneous decision.

What Tommasini failed to mention was Temirkanov himself. He strikes a commanding figure with a strong theatrical sense of presence that recalls Leopold Stokowski. Like Stokowski, he conducts without a baton but with his entire body. However, once the music starts, his appearance is far from intimidating, as his body language delves into all of the intimate details that support the notes themselves. Some might see this as egocentric display, recalling the most irritating antics of Leonard Bernstein; but the attention of the orchestra is so fixed on him that one has to recognize this as an authentic communicative bond. The proof of the pudding, of course, is the performance of the music itself and the way in which one feels one is listening to old friends for the very first time.

Tommasini was certainly right about the energy in the Mozart, although I would not call the ensemble playing blurred. However, to draw upon an old New Yorker profile of Zubin Mehta, Temirkanov tends to deliver the "vroom" style of Wilhelm Furtwängler, rather than the "pah!" style of Arturo Toscanini. This means that the clarity is not as sharp as cut glass, but it is far from blurred. It certainly did not jeopardize the spirit of the music, which, of course, is set by the context of the entire opera.

One could better appreciate Temirkanov's approach in the Beethoven. Yes, Fischer and Temirkanov were definitely of a common mind in how this piece was delivered; but I am not sure that Temirkanov was the dominating force. Fischer is that rare soloist who realizes that soft passages can speak with more impact that loud ones. At critical moments she could drop her dynamic down to a hushed sigh, and Temirkanov was positively awesome in making sure that she was never overwhelmed by the orchestra. This primarily involved bringing his entire violin section down to that same dynamic level, not an easy job but one for which that "authentic communicative bond" served him excellently. Note that I focused on the violin section. Much of the overall sound of the orchestra came from the low strings, who could invest more dynamic in the interest of providing Fischer with a foundation without drowning out her soft subtleties.

This is actually the second time I have had this sort of "first hearing" experience with the Beethoven war-horse. The first was a few seasons ago, when Midori performed it with the San Francisco Symphony under David Effron. Midori teased out new meaning in phrasing the way Fischer discovered it in dynamics. Both soloists benefitted from the solid support of an intelligence conductor leading a first-rate orchestra. My first experience was American; this one was European. If this keeps up, I shall start expecting that every performance will provide a new "first hearing," which would not be such a bad idea!

Regular readers know that I am not one to place Prokofiev in the same company with Mozart and Beethoven. I have called him a "burned-out firebrand" and celebrated his raucous qualities. His fifth symphony gives us more of the raucous, but without the cinematic backup of his Alexander Nevsky music. The Andante and Adagio movements are meditative, but the seem to be meditating more on big sounds than anything else. The scherzo between them seems to have picked up a pop-style cadence and keeps tossing it around the way a dog would a stuffed toy. As is the case with the dog, the novelty wears off before the enthusiasm. The final movement pulls out all the stops for both energy and sound, somewhat like a locomotive pulling a train too fast to control. Needless to say, this was where one could appreciate all the machinery behind Temirkanov's technique as a conductor and the fearlessness of his musicians to follow him anywhere. Tommasini invoked the spirit of Looney Tunes, but there was too much seriousness of purpose for that metaphor to stick. I prefer the locomotive metaphor, because one listens in the fear that the entire ensemble will derail; but Temirkanov's hand is too steady to allow that to happen.

Tommasini did not write anything about encores, but we got two of them in San Francisco. The first was the "Nimrod" variation from Edward Elgar's "Enigma" set; the second was the opening adagio for the Nutcracker pas de deux. In other words there was again a pairing of non-Russian and Russian. Elgar, of course, could be a master of large and grand sounds; and, aside from an occasional bulldog gesture or two, one could hardly accuse him of being raucous. "Nimrod" is both grand and sublime; and Temirkanov understood how to give it just the right sound quality. However, he did exactly the same for Tchaikovsky, whose language was far more limited and whose grandeur had been composed in the service of a pair of highly skilled dancers. He thus displayed that he was perfectly at home in just about any corner of today's repertoire, which is the most important thing that a conductor can be these days.