Philharmonic playbill

Concerts in Paris (December 2007)

Critique
Le "vrai" Tchaikovski en residence a Paris
LE MONDE | 03.12.07 | 17h23 o Mis a jour le 03.12.07 |

On ne se souvient pas de la derniere fois qu'on a entendu le 1er Concerto pour piano, de Tchaikovski, que donnaient, dimanche 2 decembre, en entree de jeu des trois concerts d'un cycle Tchaikovski au Theatre des Champs-Elysees, a Paris, le pianiste Denis Matsuev, le legendaire Orchestre philharmonique de Saint-Petersbourg et son patron, le grand Youri Temirkanov.

Il en va souvent ainsi avec les oeuvres ressassees : on les fuit et l'on finit par ne se souvenir que de leur "spectre", de leurs parodies (c'est peut-etre le concerto le plus moque du repertoire), de leurs exces - ceux de leurs interpretes, car Dieu sait si l'on peut faire de ce cheval de bataille un massacre pour broyeurs d'ivoire.

Et pourtant, joue de la sorte, ce concerto ne ressemblait a aucun autre Premier de Tchaikovski. Matsuev nous conte la vraie Russie, pas celle des larmes noyees dans la vodka qu'on voudrait faire passer pour le vrai sentiment "national", mais celle d'une violence contenue et douloureuse. Le mouvement lent, dense, est dit comme un cantique, un plain-chant. Quand il sort l'artillerie (tir de precision plutot que Grosse Bertha), Matsuev est incroyable. Mais, plus que ses rafales d'octaves, c'est son art, confondant de justesse, qui impressionne.

Beaucoup de chefs lachent la meute des cuivres au debut et a la fin de la Quatrieme Symphonie, en aiguisant sa rythmique de fanfare guerriere. Temirkanov, lui, "lie", arrondit, interiorise sans diminuer la portee de l'expression, profitant de la couleur mate de cet orchestre. Les bois semblent presque "deshydrates" et ne sont pas toujours parfaits de justesse et de sonorite. Mais qu'ils ont une couleur singuliere, vraie, si eloignee du son "international" qu'on entend si souvent (un exemple : l'Orchestre philharmonique de Los Angeles, recemment a la Salle Pleyel).

Dans le mouvement lent, on a ete touche par quelque chose de tres rare : une direction qui refuse l'affliction et lui prefere la tristesse, devastee, desolee et sans larmes, une tristesse qui donne l'envie de rendre les cles de l'existence au Bon Dieu.

Renaud Machart

Concerts in the USA (October - November, 2007)

Russian orchestra masters dynamics

By John Sutherland
Special to The Seattle Times
November 23, 2007

Listeners worried about the blurring of national identity that has befallen most international orchestras must have been relieved to hear the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra on Tuesday at Symphony Center. Under its longtime music director, Yuri Temirkanov, Russia's oldest orchestra sounded as Russian as the ruble, although in much better shape.

The Slavic quality is so deeply ingrained in the orchestra that one kept hearing Russian music even when no Russian music was being played. Temirkanov, the ensemble's chief conductor since 1988, reserved the second half of his program for native music, Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony. The rest of the concert held Mozart and Beethoven, which the visitors spoke with an accent very much their own, intriguingly so.

The orchestra tore through Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" Overture at supercharged speed, barely raising their voices. Buoyancy was achieved, but at the expense of crisp woodwind articulations.

Beethoven's Violin Concerto that followed also had its peculiarities, although the distinctive Russianness of sound this splendid group of musicians produced as a frame for Julia Fischer's finely poised solo playing softened one's reservations.

Even in this standard classical concerto one could discern the characteristic Russian approach to orchestral coloration: dark, lush string sound; pungent, even edgy, wind timbres; plangent brasses; and exuberant percussion.

Fischer was the second young female fiddle virtuosa from Munich that Orchestra Hall has heard in less than a week. She played with a bright, forward tone, uncanny accuracy of intonation and an individuality of phrasing that sometimes called attention to itself more than it did to Beethoven's music.

Also, she and Temirkanov were not always of the same mind as to tempo, even if he did his best to accommodate her slow, very inward traversal of the central Larghetto. Her athletic bow arm made the dashing bravura passages of the finale seem like child's play, and the audience went wild over her.

Even the Prokofiev was not what you would have expected. Temirkanov went in for fast and furious tempos in all but the Adagio movement, whose broadly sweeping lyricism and intensity he shaped with great care, making it the high point of the performance. Curiously, he made this big, wartime symphony feel less monumental of expression than many Western orchestral performances one has heard.

Anyone wishing to luxuriate in the deep, glowering sound and corporate virtuosity this mighty orchestra can produce, however, was free to do so. I won't soon forget the strings going at the scherzo like a mad clockwork, complete with stinging trumpet licks.

The Russians made Prokofiev's finale a shout of pure joy. With them, this music was not so much played as felt. Deeply felt.

By John von Rhein | Tribune music critic

November 8, 2007
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November 3, 2007
New York Times

Music Review
Orchestra, Muscles Flexed

By JAMES R. OESTREICH

Figuratively speaking, Yuri Temirkanov and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra rained death on Wednesday and Thursday evenings to end their stand at Carnegie Hall. First came pertinent excerpts from Prokofiev’s ballet score “Romeo and Juliet,” and you know what happens there. Then, on Thursday, Mussorgsky’s “Songs and Dances of Death” set up Prokofiev’s cantata “Alexander Nevsky,” with its harrowing song, “The Field of the Dead.”

But the orchestra breathed rich, raw life into these works and produced vivid and compelling drama onstage even without the visuals: Eisenstein’s classic Nevsky film or the dance in “Romeo” (other than that supplied by Mr. Temirkanov, with his animated but always purposeful and efficient gestures). If, in fact, anyone had tried to dance to “Tybalt’s Death,” with or without swordplay, at Mr. Temirkanov’s blazing tempo, the dying might have been more than figurative.

As it was, one feared for the welfare of the string players, racing through those thrusting, parrying and ever-shifting figurations. This was, quite simply, a stunning display of athleticism from a historically great orchestra that seems to have regained peak form after the uncertainties of the first post-Soviet decade.

That form was everywhere in evidence, starting on Wednesday (after a throat-clearing bit of Schubert, the third-act entr’acte from “Rosamunde”) with Schumann’s great Piano Concerto in A minor. This orchestra’s ability to muster powerful outbursts has never been in doubt, but here it most impressed with finesse: plush and lovely pianissimo playing, sympathetically attuned exchanges of solo phrases with the veteran pianist Nelson Freire.

The Brazilian-born Mr. Freire, who maintained a low profile for a decade or two except in collaborations with his fellow South American Martha Argerich, has become more active in recent years and remains a commanding pianist. He stormed through the first-movement cadenza and gave full vent to the concerto’s other demands without slighting its abundant lyrical effusions.

As for the orchestra, huge skills and a reasonable versatility aside, its chief glory is its native sound, or what remains of it — more than with most world-class orchestras. And this, obviously, came through most in the Mussorgsky and Prokofiev works, and in Georgy Sviridov’s “Small Triptych,” which opened the Thursday program.

That sound begins with a dark, deep, earthy quality, based in the strings. The woodwinds, round and plummy at the bottom, can be piercing up top. And the brasses retain a brilliance — with, occasionally, a characteristically Russian swagger, now endangered — that could slice through concrete. And slice it did in an encore on Wednesday — “Nimrod,” from Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations — where the trombones evoked not so much British majesty and reserve as an inappropriate aggressiveness.

But it was wholly appropriate in the Russian works, which came off spectacularly. Sviridov’s three quirky character pieces took on stature largely on the strength of the performance. The third was especially well sustained, beginning with a bright balalaika-like sound on piano and meandering, to the beat of a drum, into nothingness.

The mezzo-soprano Larissa Diadkova was an excellent soloist in the Mussorgsky and Prokofiev songs, sturdy and intensely expressive. The Mussorgsky work may be most effective when sung by a Slavic basso profundo to its original, spare piano accompaniment: black on black. If Ms. Diadkova did not quite achieve pitch-blackness, neither does Shostakovich’s orchestration, used here, which introduces almost frivolous colorations in a few spots.

The Dessoff Symphonic Choir and the Russian Chamber Chorus of New York contributed gamely to the Prokofiev. But there was never a danger that, though some 150 strong, they would steal any of the show from that indomitable orchestra.

Figaro Gets a Gaudy Russian Tattoo

November 1, 2007
MUSIC REVIEW
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

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. Mr. Temirkanov and this orchestra, which is celebrating its 125th anniversary, presented the first of three ambitious programs at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday night. Reactions surely differed over these sometimes curious but arresting performances. But under Mr. Temirkanov, its director since 1988, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic sounds like no other orchestra.

Of course, without resorting to nationalistic stereotypes it's hard to say what makes Mr. Temirkanov's work with this orchestra exactly Russian. It has something to do with the cultivation of an earthy orchestral sound, rather than the lighter textures and velvety sheen of, say, French orchestras; and also the preference for sweeping, organic interpretations at the expense of Germanic structural clarity.
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.

If not the best-structured interpretation, the performance was freshly conceived and unconventional. In the stately first movement the flow and sweep came not from the tempo, which was not appreciably faster than you typically hear, but from the nervous tinge of the playing. The St. Petersburg musicians kept anticipating phrases, jumping in slightly early, in an intriguing way.

Ms. Fischer found an appealing balance between nobility of statement and rhapsodic freedom. Technically her playing was impressively accomplished and elegant, richly varied in colorings. In long-spanned, calmly lyrical phrases her luminous and true tone soared over the rustic, heavy-textured orchestra. At times the sound of the Philharmonic's low strings was so thick and deep I wanted to adjust the balance control and crank up the treble. The Larghetto, though affectingly rendered, seemed a little amorphous, almost like a pensive reflection on the slow movement, not the thing itself. The Rondo, to my surprise, was graceful and buoyant, taken at a nice though not hectic clip, and brimming with Mendelssohnian whimsy. This question of what makes this orchestra Russian was answered decisively in the performance of Prokofiev's epic Fifth Symphony, composed in 1944 while the debilitating Soviet military campaign against the Nazis was nearing its end. As the opening movement, a ruminative Andante, began, the winds, playing tentative statements of the theme, had a reedy, plaintive and exotic allure. Then, when the low strings entered solemnly, here we were in mother Russia. It was like hearing gravelly, thick-voiced operatic basses from the Maryinsky Theater.

Mr. Temirkanov's performance was not tidy or clear textured. Still, I have never heard this teeming symphony - with its bitingly satirical Allegro marcato movement, its funereal Adagio, and its madcap finale - sound so shocking and modern. Mr. Temirkanov maximized the astringent dissonance of the harmonic language, the caustic brashness of the brass outbursts, and the every-which-way overlapping of elements in the climax, which sounded like hellbent music for a Looney Tunes film. A crazed Russian version of course.

The final performance by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall is tonight at 8; (212) 247-7800, carnegiehall.org.

St. Petersburg Philharmonic, A Program of High Notes

By Robert Battey
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, October 25, 2007; Page C13

Russia's oldest and most eminent orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, made a welcome visit to the Kennedy Center on Tuesday, in a comfortably mainstream program of Mozart, Beethoven and Prokofiev. The orchestra is both muscular and agile under Music Director Yuri Temirkanov, whose work we used to enjoy with the Baltimore Symphony. Although every name on the group's roster is Russian, it has a more international sound and has certainly expanded and refined its sonority since its Soviet-era recordings. For better or worse, they now sound not unlike a fine American orchestra such as the New York Philharmonic.

Temirkanov is not the martinet of his predecessor and mentor Yevgeny Mravinsky. Rather than beating time with minatory precision, he "paints" the larger phrases, trusting the players to attend to details. His manner is that of a tour guide calling attention to points of interest during a voyage, not a commander marshaling his troops.

In the "Marriage of Figaro" Overture, the strings were eerily quiet in the opening, the woodwinds laughed and sparkled, and the tutti scales at the end were as precise as anything the Cleveland Orchestra could have done.

Violinist Julia Fischer then joined the orchestra for a deft, silvery performance of the Beethoven Concerto. Fischer, still in her mid-20s, is a sort of German Hilary Hahn, with pinpoint accuracy, natural stage presence and golden-haired beauty. She does not have a lush, sybaritic sound, and never got the memo, apparently circulating these days, that slower equals more musical. Fischer harks back to such Apollonian violinists of yesteryear as Nathan Milstein and Arthur Grumiaux; she makes her points phrase by phrase, rather than note by note. Other than a slightly dry Larghetto, this was an almost ideal rendition of the piece, particularly so with Temirkanov's meticulous partnership, which both supported and impelled Fischer.

Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony is, of course, right in this orchestra's wheelhouse. Played with this level of familiarity and fervor, even the longueurs make an impression. Prokofiev's blocklike construction included some desultory sections, but these musicians made every bar persuasive. The strings tore into the virtuoso passages with masticating glee, and Temirkanov made sure the brass let them through. The symphony's strongest movement -- the Scherzo -- went especially well: the winds and percussion expertly creating the kaleidoscopic colors, and Temirkanov bringing out the comical toy soldiers in the first section and the Gershwin/Ravel saunter of the central part. This was outstanding musicmaking.

Concerts in Italy (September 2007)

2007-09-14
2007-09-16
2007-09-13
2007-09-16

Concert in Birmingham on 27.02.07

A night of surprises

… Performances during the entire concert were equally fresh.. Perhaps Temirkanov's highly personal style of conducting has the effect of keeping musicians wide-awake, but perhaps it is also everyone's enthusiastic pride in responding to music of fabulous quality.

Prokofiev's Classical Symphony launched proceedings with wit and sparkle, smiling and zestful, with Temirkanov tweaking his orchestra like a finely-tuned engine.

March 1 2007
The Birmingham Post
Christopher Morley