Gergiev’s orchestra has lost its touch
Mariinsky’s encores only bright spots
What on earth has happened to Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra?
Inconsistency has always been a distinctive characteristic of this brilliant, wayward conductor and the ensemble he’s led for 30 years. Their local visits, in San Francisco in 2010 and most recently in Berkeley last year, have been unpredictably divided between performances of eloquent beauty and displays of coarse, illcoordinated bombast.
But things seem to have been declining steadily since then, with all of the performers’ worst impulses coming to the fore. After the orchestra’s latest appearance — two consecutive concerts in Davies Symphony Hall under the auspices of the San Francisco Symphony — even some inconsistency would have been welcome. It would have meant a change from the almost unalleviated crudity, heavy-handedness and technical sloppiness on display.
Maybe San Francisco just caught Gergiev and the Mariinsky during a bad stretch. Or maybe this is what happens over time once certain habits become deeply ingrained.
In any case, to paraphrase the old Catskills joke, even if the food was terrible the portions were huge. The orchestra’s programming consisted of two overstuffed lineups, beginning on Sunday, Oct. 21, with an all-Stravinsky lineup and continuing the following night with music by Debussy, Rachmaninoff and Mahler.
Of the two, the Stra-
The Stravinsky outing was probably the greater disappointment, if only because these performers have historically fared well with Russian music.
vinsky outing was probably the greater disappointment, if only because these performers have historically fared well with Russian music. But that has typically meant the work of composers like Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Prokofiev.
Stravinsky, who left his homeland for good in the wake of the Revolution, is another kind of Russian entirely — a point driven home by the thoroughness with which Gergiev and the orchestra stripped his music of its elegance, sheen and wit. The two symphonies from the 1940s, the “Symphony in Three Movements” and “Symphony in C,” sounded equally gray and ponderous, weighed down by a laborious approach to the music’s vivacious rhythms; the “Firebird” Suite landed its big explosive punches but lacked any sense of fairytale mystery.
In between, Denis Matsuev was the soloist in the composer’s “Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra,” a rarely heard piece whose delightful high spirits — not a common vein for Stravinsky to work in — could be glimpsed only rarely beneath the pummeling onslaught of the performance. Matsuev’s rendition the next night of Rachmaninoff ’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” was no more enlightening, a torrent of thunderous, overweighted chords and blurry, approximate passagework.
Monday’s concert found the orchestra in even sorrier shape, with a leaden performance of Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” and a Mahler Fifth that was an embarrassing farrago of slovenly execution and interpretive carelessness.
But where, you’re probably asking, was the bright spot? I can tell you: in Matsuev’s splendidly played encores, by Sibelius on Sunday (the nimble, charming “Etude in A Minor,” Op. 76, No. 2) and Rachmaninoff on Monday (“Etude-Tableau in A Minor,” Op. 39, No. 2). To date, Matsuev has only appeared here in company with the Mariinsky; maybe it’s time for us to hear what he’s capable of on his own.
But where was the bright spot? I can tell you: in Matsuev’s splendidly played encores.