There’s a tendency, within period music orchestras, to over-revel in ridiculous premieres. Who has not been to a concert comprised of baroque music and been surprised to discover in the program that one of the pieces from 300 years ago is, in fact, being heard for the first time in Australia? (Heard for the first time on a concert stage, that is, as opposed, one assumes, to being broadcast on the radio.) There comes with such premieres the ever-present nail-scratch of a withered barrel being desperately scraped, a kind of musical leprosy that makes one wonder just what is wrong with the unheard piece. Old operas also get much the same treatment, though this critic finds it somewhat more acceptable – such as with Pinchgut Opera’s Australian premiere of Vivaldi’s Griselda last year, which was a triumph in every sense of the word.
So when this critic found himself in the Concert Hall one evening (after having consciously travelled there – one didn’t just confusedly wake up in the middle of the stalls with a ten’o’clock shadow on his face and a drool-stained program in his hand), preparing himself to hear the Australian premiere, played by the Sydney Symphony, of a Rachmaninoff piano concerto, one was somewhat concerned. One needn’t have been.
What the premiere was, as it turns out, was of the original version of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.4 in G minor, Op.40. Critics being the nasty creatures they are, and all too happy to rain on anyone’s parade in any weather condition, took Rachmaninoff to task about his concerto. Rachmaninoff was rather taken aback by the negative contemporary responses and complaints, especially about the length, and so snipped the first two movements here and there, but his cutting in the third and final movement ‘radically changed the shape of the structure’, as the program notes tell us. ‘The result, he says, is disjointed, while the original seems more organic.’ Frankenstein’s monster versus unaided nature, one assumes. It is the third version of his concerto that audiences have become used to – and treated, on the whole, somewhat lukewarmly – but in recent years the original version, so we are told, has been making resurgence. And one can only hope it continues.
The performance this evening was conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy – principal conductor and artistic advisor of the SSO – and performed by pianist Scott Davie. Davie is a relatively unflamboyant performer, with none of the balletic poses or furious jerkings of some previous pianists over the last few months. Ashkenazy, covered, from my seat in the stalls, by the piano lid, was – on the basis of the symphony afterwards – his usual energetic, dynamic self. Davie’s interpretation of the piece was one full of attack and tight control, while Ashkenazy handled the lesser swells of the fourth more than amiably. (There is not as much sweeping, as compared to the famous second concerto.) The first movement was a bit hit and miss, but the middle and final movements had the right kinds of inertia for each of their tempos. Davie played an encore but this critic, for the life of him, can’t remember what it was.
The other work on the program was Tchaikovsky’s Manfred – Symphony after Byron, Op.58, also known as a chance for the organist, unused for three movements, to catch up on some reading. (David Drury was organist for the evening, though he seems to have missed out on the perfect opportunity to read a few chapters of Fifty Shades of Grey.) Ashkenazy does grand turmoil rather well, and so was the case with this performance. There was a breathless drama to much of the music as Manfred’s passions overtook him, and the symphony as a whole rarely lapsed into inattention. Overall, a fine concert, and a most worthy premiere.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Russian Masters
Sydney Symphony
Scott Davie – piano
Vladimir Ashkenazy – conductor
Sergei Rachmaninoff – Piano Concerto No.4 in G minor, Op.40
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Manfred – Symphony after Byron, Op.58
Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
24 November
