{"id":14101,"date":"2013-10-24T15:05:17","date_gmt":"2013-10-24T19:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=14101"},"modified":"2014-03-15T17:50:22","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T21:50:22","slug":"valery-the-variable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=14101","title":{"rendered":"Valery the Variable"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Sedgwick Clark<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s so variable.\u201d That\u2019s the first thing critics say about Valery Gergiev. He conducted his Mariinsky Orchestra three times at Carnegie Hall in an eight-day period early this month, interrupted by four Met performances (two on Saturday) and runouts to Newark and Washington, D.C. Even when he was busy at the Met, the orchestra was moonlighting under the leadership of Ignat Solzhenitsyn. Evidently, the man and his musicians never rest, to wit this link listing his next month and a half of concerts:<\/p>\n<ul>http:\/\/mariinsky.us\/performances\/valery-gergiev-performance-schedule\/<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Stravinsky<\/strong><br \/>\nEach of the three Carnegie concerts was devoted to a single composer: Stravinsky (10\/10), Shostakovich (10\/11), and Rachmaninoff (10\/15). Gergiev seems to me most unpredictable with his own orchestra, the Mariinsky, which by all reports is subject to his rehearsal and programming whims. His performing of Stravinsky\u2019s first three ballets in order of composition was a great idea but in practice overly ambitious. <em>The Firebird <\/em>(complete) was best, right up with Boulez\/New York Philharmonic (1975) and Dutoit\/Montreal (1986) as the best I\u2019ve heard in concert\u2014dramatic, dynamic, gorgeously played, with a sparkling color palette. But <em>P\u00e9trouchka <\/em>(1911 orchestration) was thickly textured, monochromatic, often too loud in quiet passages, and, most alarming, humorless. <em>The Rite of Spring<\/em>\u2019s huge dynamic range was squashed, with the fat <em>forte<\/em> of the opening winds\u2014Stravinsky\u2019s \u201cawakening of nature, the scratching, gnawing, wiggling of birds and beasts\u201d\u2014totally without mystery. The Mariinsky players were exhausted, and it showed in their spotty ensemble. When Gergiev returned to the stage for his second bow he turned to the audience, announced that it was Verdi\u2019s 200th birthday, and proceeded to conduct an electrically charged overture to <em>La Forza del destino<\/em>! Who says they were tired?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Shostakovich<\/strong><br \/>\nGergiev\u2019s shattering performance of Shostakovich\u2019s wartime Eighth Symphony left me shell shocked. Only four times before have I been so emotionally wrung out in a concert hall: a Bernstein\/NYPhil Mahler Ninth in September 1970, Colin Davis\u2019s Beethoven <em>Missa solemnis <\/em>with the London Symphony two years ago this week, and Rostropovich\u2019s Britten <em>War Requiem <\/em>in January 1979 and Shostakovich Eighth in April 1986, both with the Washington National Symphony.<\/p>\n<p>It took me a couple of movements to get into Gergiev\u2019s interpretation. It\u2019s dicey to impose extra-musical interpretations onto symphonic works, but the confluence of Shostakovich\u2019s life and the often pictorial episodes in his music are difficult to ignore. Whichever stance one takes\u2014music as pure expression or a reflection of the composer\u2019s experiences\u2014Gergiev struck me as understated in the first movement climax. I fancifully imagine the Nazis marching into Russia at this point, which will seem overly literal to some. Rostropovich\u2019s players peeled the paint off Carnegie\u2019s walls with their<em> fortississimos<\/em>, and the sudden, gut-clutching plunge of <em>tremolando<\/em> strings from <em>fff<\/em> to <em>sfpp<\/em>, after 34 pages of ear-splitting onslaught, induced audible gasps from Rostropovich\u2019s audience. (Perhaps Gergiev\u2019s cozying up to Putin is a liability when measured against the sensibility of a man who grew up during the Stalin purges.) Gergiev\u2019s brisk tempo in the second-movement <em>Allegretto<\/em> skated over its Mahlerian <em>grotesquerie<\/em>, but the mechanized power of the third movement had its full effect, climaxing with brutal timpani and the grinding dissonance of the first movement. Throughout Gergiev\u2019s fourth-movement <em>Largo<\/em>, one could hear the proverbial pin drop. Woodwinds strike up a perky tune in the last movement, but optimism is short-lived and the violent attacks from the first movement return. The coda\u2014a vision of the abyss\u2014is one of most unsettling passages in all of music.<\/p>\n<p>An interview with Shostakovich about his Eighth Symphony, quoted in Laurel E. Fay\u2019s biography, <em>Shostakovich: A Life <\/em>(Oxford), was published a month before its premiere: \u201cI can sum up the philosophical conception of my new work in three words: life is beautiful. Everything that is dark and gloomy will rot away, vanish, and the beautiful will triumph.\u201d Huh? I doubt that anyone in Carnegie Hall\u2019s audience would agree, for they sat through the work with uncommon attention. Gergiev stood still for half a minute after the final double bass pizzicatos had died away, and I felt as if everyone\u2014performers and audience alike\u2014had communed in the infinite.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rachmaninoff <\/strong><br \/>\nThe 1954 edition of <em>Grove<\/em> prophesied that the music of Rachmaninoff would be forgotten. Not if performances like Gergiev\u2019s are around. The knife-edged drama of the old Kondrashin recording remains my touchstone in the <em>Symphonic Dances <\/em>(1942), but Gergiev may have surpassed his fellow Russian in the nostalgic <em>Lento assai <\/em>in the third dance, luxuriating in Rachmaninoff\u2019s luscious melodies to a degree that makes me glad he\u2019s away from home so often.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Russian Rambo<\/strong><br \/>\nGergiev\u2019s taste in pianists is not mine. Where once he trotted out the frenzied Russian-American Alexander Toradze, on this tour he brought the muscle-bound Russian Rambo Denis Matsuev to pummel Shostakovich\u2019s early, delightful Concerto No. 1 for Piano, Trumpet, and Strings. Loud and fast are the primary weapons in his arsenal. Oblivious to this work\u2019s nose-thumbing Rossinian wit, this 1998 Tchaikovsky Competition winner plowed through the last-movement\u2019s parodistic cadenza of beer hall songs and folk tunes with harried determination. Rarely have I felt myself at such odds with a soloist.<\/p>\n<p>His take-no-prisoners view of Rachmaninoff\u2019s Third Concerto eschewed lyricism, poetry, and tonal beauty, qualities well apparent in the composer\u2019s own ancient recording. Matsuev doesn\u2019t bang, really, he\u2019s just repellently<em> forceful<\/em>, even when playing <em>pianissimo<\/em>, and he only plays notes instead of phrases. To no surprise, he opted for the heavy chordal cadenza in the first movement. The small cut in the finale (the <em>Meno mosso<\/em> two bars after 52 to the a tempo at 54) is often made and does no harm. Gergiev\u2019s accompaniments were strong and supportive\u2014some of his most reliable conducting in these three concerts. In December he performs the Shostakovich concerto in Paris with Daniil Trifonov, an impressive young competition winner with a notably colorful tonal palette; now <em>that\u2019s<\/em> a performance I\u2019d love to hear.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gergiev at the Met<\/strong><br \/>\nA final word on the two operas Gergiev conducted at the Met: Shostakovich\u2019s <em>The Nose <\/em>and Tchaikovsky\u2019s <em>Eugene Onegin<\/em>. It\u2019s always best to attend Gergiev performances toward the end of a run, whether at the Met or the Philharmonic. Nearly all the reviewers complained about slow tempos at the opening of <em>Onegin<\/em>; I caught his final performance (10\/12) and couldn\u2019t imagine more effective, naturally flowing tempos. <em>The Nose<\/em> (10\/8) was even more fun than in its first go-around, two seasons ago. There aren\u2019t any big tunes to whistle on the way home, but the production is a hoot. One wonders how Shostakovich\u2019s political satire got through the censors.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Looking Forward<\/strong><br \/>\nMy week\u2019s scheduled concerts (8:00 p.m. unless otherwise noted):<br \/>\n10\/24 Zankel Hall at 7:00. Tetzlaff Quartet. Haydn: Quartet in C major, Op. 20, No. 2. Bart\u00f3k: Quartet No. 4. Beethoven: Quartet in A minor, Op. 132.<br \/>\n10\/26 Metropolitan Opera. Britten: <em>Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em>. James Conlon (cond.); Kim, Wall, DeShong, Davies, Kaiser, Simpson, M. Rose, Costello.<\/p>\n<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none;height:34px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=14101\" send=\"false\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Sedgwick Clark \u201cHe\u2019s so variable.\u201d That\u2019s the first thing critics say about Valery Gergiev. He conducted his Mariinsky Orchestra three times at Carnegie Hall in an eight-day period early this month, interrupted by four Met performances (two on Saturday) and runouts to Newark and Washington, D.C. Even when he was busy at the Met, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,10],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14101"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14101"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16379,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14101\/revisions\/16379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}