Paavo Jarvi and CSO close the season on a high note
By Mary Ellyn Hutton
Cincinnati Post, May 7, 2005
Blame it on pianist Alexander Toradze - or an overdose of percussion or too much (T)chai(kovsky).
But by the time Paavo Jarvi and the Cincinnati Symphony sent up the final triple forte chords of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony Friday night at Music Hall, the audience burst into a roar.
The mood had been building all evening , so much so that the crowd seemed almost punchy by the finale of the Tchaikovsky, breaking into applause at various times, apparently for the sheer merriment of it. Jarvi looked around once, as if to say "not yet," but he seemed more amused than annoyed.
It was the final concert of the CSO season and a bit of "tearing down the goal post" might have seemed in order. Especially after a season filled with musical highs and reports of such from the road during the orchestra's fall tour of Europe.
Joining Friday night's crowd were representatives of the Association of Major Symphony Orchestra Volunteers, who have been meeting in Cincinnati this week. Perhaps they were surprised by what they heard from this midwestern orchestra, which has been gradually gaining the ear of people beyond southwestern Ohio.
Toradze has had to take the blame for excitement at the CSO before, most recently in Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 during the 2001-02 season. Friday he applied his roguish virtuosity to Shostakovich's Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Strings in C Minor. Joining him in an extraordinary performance was CSO principal trumpeter Philip Collins.
Shostakovich's 1933 concerto - not performed at the CSO since its premiere here in 1947 - lends itself perfectly to mischief. There are references to Beethoven as well as Shostakovich's own music in it, and there are some wonderfully wacky moments in the final movement. The trumpet plays an important but subordinate role - Collins was positioned behind the orchestra in the trumpet's usual spot - underscoring expressive moments and providing a special punch of its own.
Toradze's big-boned, energized playing grabbed listeners' by the scruff of the neck in the first movement, whose principal theme Shostakovich deliberately borrowed from Beethoven's "Appassionata" Sonata. Collins' interjections included snippets from Beethoven's Septet. All was not fun and games in Shostakovich's world, however - revisionists can read all kinds of anti-Soviet meanings into his music - and the concerto has a soulful slow movement. Toradze read it solemnly and softly, a bit like a Russian "Valse Triste," Collins' muted trumpet sounding like a call from a distant battlefield.
Jarvi was Toradze's willing accomplice in the bravura finale - one is reminded that both men are from countries formerly dominated by the Soviet Union (Estonia and Georgia) - and there were broadsides throughout. Beethoven's "Rage Over a Lost Penny" makes a brief appearance in the piano cadenza, and it was frankly burlesque to the end, with a big glissando in the piano and an off-to-the-races fanfare by Collins with gleeful afterbeats by Toradze and the CSO.
The encore was just that, a repeat of the finale, where Toradze raised the mirth meter by changing a formerly forte chord to pianissimo and "messing up" one of the bravura passages with exaggerated exertion.
Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony began with a fanfare of a different kind, stolid, serious and brassy, answered by chords that teased a rumble from the Music Hall floorboards. Lines were clean and full of intensity throughout the first movement. The strings executed their dotted rhythms with military precision, and Jarvi took the orchestra down to a whisper at times for a sublime effect.
The lovely Andantino earned well deserved applause - kudos to the woodwinds for some eloquent solo work - and the jaunty third movement proceeded like clockwork. Jarvi laid aside his baton here, shaping the pizzicato passages with subtle but effective gestures, demonstrating the Jarvi maxim that sometimes it isn't necessary to conduct at all.
He picked up his baton for the final Allegro con fuoco, whose bombast and showy scalar passages brought the audience to their feet.
Jarvi opened with the CSO premiere of American composer Jennifer Higdon's 2000 "Fanfare Ritmico," a seven-minute immersion in percussion and rhythmic pizzazz.
Cincinnati Post, May 7, 2005
Blame it on pianist Alexander Toradze - or an overdose of percussion or too much (T)chai(kovsky).
But by the time Paavo Jarvi and the Cincinnati Symphony sent up the final triple forte chords of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony Friday night at Music Hall, the audience burst into a roar.
The mood had been building all evening , so much so that the crowd seemed almost punchy by the finale of the Tchaikovsky, breaking into applause at various times, apparently for the sheer merriment of it. Jarvi looked around once, as if to say "not yet," but he seemed more amused than annoyed.
It was the final concert of the CSO season and a bit of "tearing down the goal post" might have seemed in order. Especially after a season filled with musical highs and reports of such from the road during the orchestra's fall tour of Europe.
Joining Friday night's crowd were representatives of the Association of Major Symphony Orchestra Volunteers, who have been meeting in Cincinnati this week. Perhaps they were surprised by what they heard from this midwestern orchestra, which has been gradually gaining the ear of people beyond southwestern Ohio.
Toradze has had to take the blame for excitement at the CSO before, most recently in Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 during the 2001-02 season. Friday he applied his roguish virtuosity to Shostakovich's Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Strings in C Minor. Joining him in an extraordinary performance was CSO principal trumpeter Philip Collins.
Shostakovich's 1933 concerto - not performed at the CSO since its premiere here in 1947 - lends itself perfectly to mischief. There are references to Beethoven as well as Shostakovich's own music in it, and there are some wonderfully wacky moments in the final movement. The trumpet plays an important but subordinate role - Collins was positioned behind the orchestra in the trumpet's usual spot - underscoring expressive moments and providing a special punch of its own.
Toradze's big-boned, energized playing grabbed listeners' by the scruff of the neck in the first movement, whose principal theme Shostakovich deliberately borrowed from Beethoven's "Appassionata" Sonata. Collins' interjections included snippets from Beethoven's Septet. All was not fun and games in Shostakovich's world, however - revisionists can read all kinds of anti-Soviet meanings into his music - and the concerto has a soulful slow movement. Toradze read it solemnly and softly, a bit like a Russian "Valse Triste," Collins' muted trumpet sounding like a call from a distant battlefield.
Jarvi was Toradze's willing accomplice in the bravura finale - one is reminded that both men are from countries formerly dominated by the Soviet Union (Estonia and Georgia) - and there were broadsides throughout. Beethoven's "Rage Over a Lost Penny" makes a brief appearance in the piano cadenza, and it was frankly burlesque to the end, with a big glissando in the piano and an off-to-the-races fanfare by Collins with gleeful afterbeats by Toradze and the CSO.
The encore was just that, a repeat of the finale, where Toradze raised the mirth meter by changing a formerly forte chord to pianissimo and "messing up" one of the bravura passages with exaggerated exertion.
Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony began with a fanfare of a different kind, stolid, serious and brassy, answered by chords that teased a rumble from the Music Hall floorboards. Lines were clean and full of intensity throughout the first movement. The strings executed their dotted rhythms with military precision, and Jarvi took the orchestra down to a whisper at times for a sublime effect.
The lovely Andantino earned well deserved applause - kudos to the woodwinds for some eloquent solo work - and the jaunty third movement proceeded like clockwork. Jarvi laid aside his baton here, shaping the pizzicato passages with subtle but effective gestures, demonstrating the Jarvi maxim that sometimes it isn't necessary to conduct at all.
He picked up his baton for the final Allegro con fuoco, whose bombast and showy scalar passages brought the audience to their feet.
Jarvi opened with the CSO premiere of American composer Jennifer Higdon's 2000 "Fanfare Ritmico," a seven-minute immersion in percussion and rhythmic pizzazz.
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