Arts & Events

New: San Francisco Symphony’s Russian Night

Reviewed b y James Roy MacBean
Saturday July 23, 2016 - 10:18:00 PM

On Friday evening, July 22, the San Francisco Symphony offered an all-Russian program at Davies Hall led by conductor Edwin Outwater, Music Director of the Symphony’s Summer concerts. On tap were the Festive Overture by Dimitri Shostakovich, the Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff, and the Fourth Symphony in F minor by Piotr Tchaikovsky. Many Russians and Russian-Americans were noticeably in attendance for this concert. 

Shostakovich’s Festive Overture was commissioned in 1954 by Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre to celebrate the 37th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Shostakovich, who had spent many years going in and out of favor with Soviet watchdogs, took this opportunity to compose a fairly light-hearted paean of praise to the Bolshevik Revolution. His Festive Overture, only six minutes long, opens with a portentous brass fanfare. Soon, however, the music becomes light and breezy, as a lyrical strain is developed, reminiscent of the comic opera music of, say, a Rossini. After a pizzicato section, this short piece races to a fortissimo climax that is similar to a Rossini crescendo. 

Next on the program was Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Opus 18, with pianist Natasha Paremsky as soloist. Paremsky, born in Russia but naturalized as a US citizen before the age of 11, has won numerous awards, including the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year Award in 2010. Here, in Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto, Paremsky began with the oft-repeated opening chords in the piano’s low register, which always remind me of the tolling of bells in a Russian Orthodox cathedral. (The deeply resonant bells of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia, Bulgaria, are indelibly printed in my audio memory.) After these opening chords, there is a brief melody heard in piano and violins. Then the strings combine with a clarinet to establish a simple but elegant melody. For once, Rachmaninoff, who usually gives the lead to the piano, allows the orchestra to establish a fertile give-and-take with the solo instrument. Soon, however, the piano strikes out on its own in the Grand Romantic manner. There is much turbulence in this movement, and the pianist is obliged to handle many difficult passages. Natasha Paremsky handled them adroitly. 

The second movement, an Adagio sostenuto, is one of my favorites among Rachmaninoff’s piano concertos. Its haunting melody is played first by piano and flute, then by piano and clarinet. There is something soft and poignant about this melody, and it is deeply moving. Natasha Paremsky was particularly expressive in this lovely Adagio. Again, there is give-and-take between orchestra and soloist here. A sudden scherzo erupts, which turns into a splashy cadenza for piano, until paired flutes return to the main melodic theme. As the third and final movement begins, a march is heard. It begins as a vigorous march but soon gives way to one of those lovely melodies Rachmaninoff seems to spin effortlessly. This wonderful theme is developed at length until it builds to a big fortissimo conclusion, bringing this concerto to a resounding close, rounded off in powerful fashion by Paremsky. As an encore, Paremsky played Rachmaninoff’s Étude Tableau, which she executed with panache. 

After intermission, conductor Edwin Outwater spoke to the audience and introduced one of the Symphony’s native Russians, second violinist David Chernyavsky, who spoke about growing up hearing Tchaikovsky’s music in St. Petersburg, then Leningrad. Chernyavsky called attention to the Russian folk song heard in the final movement of Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony, which we were about to hear. This, he said, is a song, The Little Birch Tree, known by every Russian. He also recalled the first Tchaikovsky music he played as a child on violin, the Russian dance from Swan Lake, which he promptly played for us. Then, with no further ado, conductor Edwin Outwater led the orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony. 

The opening bars of Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony have been likened to the opening bars of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. In both cases, scholars have noticed, the theme of fate knocking at the door is introduced at the outset. However, there is a difference. As one Russian wag put it, whereas Beethoven resigns himself to Fate and devotes the whole of his 5th Symphony to embracing Fate, Tchaikovsky hears Fate knocking at the door at the beginning of his 4th Symphony and immediately runs for the windows seeking any possible way to escape Fate.  

Fate, for Tchaikovsky, seems to have been construed in terms of his own problematic homosexuality, which he tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to keep hidden. He also tried, also unsuccessfully, to go straight, rushing into marriage with a former pupil, Antonina Ivanovna Miliukova, who wrote him a letter expressing her crush on him. Unable to handle this switch, Tchaikovsky fled in sexual panic and never con-summated his marriage, though he never lived with his wife but never divorced her. Some of this trauma is present in Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony, where the theme of Fate not only opens the work but also returns at the end to strike a negative note. In between, there is some fine interplay heard in the reeds, with flute, oboe and clarinet. There is also extended pizzicato development. However, in the fourth and final movement, a bombastic fanfare opens the proceedings, which only become ever more bombastic, with Tchaikovsky’s characteristic repeated clashing of cymbals leading the way to ultimate perdition, as the Fate motif is reintroduced to give the whole symphony a decidedly negative cast. Under Edwin Outwater’s direction, this was about as good a reading of this fairly depressing work as one might hear; but it is simply never going to be one of my favorite orchestral works.