CONDUCTING ELECTRICITY
Young violinist combines energy, mature emotional expression
Conductor Alexander Prior and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra perform a Tchaikovsky & Sibelius concert at the Winspear Centre on Friday featuring soloist Simone Porter. A repeat performance is set for 8 p.m. on Saturday. Classical music critic Mark Morris reviews the concert on
Those unlucky concertgoers who arrived late at the Winspear Centre for the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra’s concert on Friday have no idea what they missed — one of the most exciting performances of the first movement of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto they’re ever likely to hear.
The concerto opened the eagerly anticipated concert, which is being repeated on Saturday. It was conducted by Alexander Prior, who will become the ESO’s chief conductor in September.
There was a definite sense of a changing of the guard as he took to the podium. Current music director (and future conductor emeritus) William Eddins still has a number of concerts to conduct in this season — including Carl Orff ’s Carmina Burana on June 16 and 17 — but here, surely, was a signal of things to come.
The repertoire Prior chose was, to say the least, substantial. No overture, but instead one of the great violin concertos, and two symphonies that had never been played by the ESO before.
One immediately obvious change was in the layout of the orchestra. The double basses created a back wall behind the woodwind, violins more traditionally placed to Prior’s left, the cellos and then the violas to his extreme right. The trumpets and trombones, up behind the cellos, were matched on the other side of the stage by the horns.
Prior was also responsible for choosing the soloist for the Tchaikovsky, who was making her debut with the orchestra.
The 20-year old American Simone Porter made her first professional appearance with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra at age 10, premièred a violin concerto by Prior himself at 12, and made her international debut with the Royal Philharmonic at 13.
She is quite simply marvellous. She reminded me most of all of the young Yehudi Menuhin — the same kind of remarkable golden tones and vibrant smoothness, the huge sound, the sense that any technical virtuoso challenges are a figment of the imagination, the seemingly fearless ease of the whole thing. Like Menuhin, she has the energy, the invigoration of youth, but a maturity of emotional expression beyond her years.
She was clearly inspirational to the orchestra, too, as their playing was white-hot in the first movement and again at the end. Typical of the rapport was a marvellously quiet and yet so-intense exchange of the phrases between the violin and the solo cello (Raphael Hoekman) in the final movement.
The name of the Danish composer Rued Langgaard wasn’t, I
suspect, familiar to many. Largely neglected in his lifetime, he died at age 58 in 1952. Recently, though, his prolific output — 16 symphonies, a major opera, and some 415 other works — has undergone a welcome reappraisal.
His Symphony No. 4 was composed in 1916 (reputedly in six days), in a period when his music, while late-Romantic, also showed an awareness of new, modernistic trends. Titled The Fall of Leaves, it is cast in a single 24-minute symphonic structure divided into eight sections, to which he gave descriptive titles.
There’s a wide range of mood, from the almost bucolically lyrical (oboe solo against hushed violins) to snarling, muted brass, with some clear tone-painting — a ‘rustle in the forest,’ thunder, the sound of bells on a Sunday morning.
Prior chose to bring out the considerable drama of the piece, rather than an emphasis on the autumnal lyricism of some interpretations, and this was much to the work’s advantage. Even Prior’s enthusiasm (ably echoed by the orchestra) can’t disguise that this is a quirky and somewhat kaleidoscopic symphony, compelling in its immediate effects, less convincing overall. The audience clearly enjoyed this music, and I do hope that Prior brings us more Langgaard, especially the Symphony No. 6, Heaven Storming.
It was surprising that the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra had never before performed Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7, for in many ways it is the culmination of his mastery of the form. It also is in one continuous movement, but Sibelius is here completely original. While the movements of symphonies have traditionally been fixed in tempos, and each have a different key, Sibelius keeps almost the whole symphony in C or C minor, and constantly varies the tempos.
Prior chose to rather play down the yearning elements of the symphony’s opening, in favour of emphasizing the smooth glow of Sibelius’ sound. Here the arrangement of the orchestra really came into its own, as, with that wall of basses as the back, the various elements — strings, brass, woodwind — were spread across the sound stage, more of a classical ‘wall of sound’ that entirely suited Prior’s approach.
That was to concentrate on the organic flow of the unfolding of the music, the various elements of the sound overlapping and folding into each other. It’s an effective way of viewing the symphony. If it does lose some of the drama that others have found in the work, in recompense it presents the whole symphony, so to speak, in one long breath.
This was a powerful concert, one that augers well for the future. And if you want to encounter someone who has all the potential to be one of the great violinists of her era, grab a ticket for Saturday while you can, and go hear Simone Porter play.