Two prizewinners joined forces Thursday night as guest
artists with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor José Luis Gomez
won the Georg Solti competition in 2010; pianist Vadym Kholodenko won the gold
medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2013. They made an
impressive team in a front-loaded program that put the heaviest, or at least
the loudest, artillery in the first half.
(The program will be repeated on Saturday night at 8.)
Richard Strauss’s tone poem “Death and Transfiguration” has
always struck me as pompous and rather empty, though being by Strauss, it has
its share of luscious and dramatic moments. Gomez certainly made it listenable:
he paced this piece expertly and never wallowed in Strauss’s rich
orchestration. The last few minutes in particular came off handsomely, with a
solid, glowing sound featuring some sonorous brass playing. I can look forward
to my own transfiguration, if it sounds anything like this.
Vadym Kholodenko chose an unusual vehicle for his RPO debut.
Sergei Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto has an interesting history: he wrote
it in 1913, while he was still a student, and first performed it amid great
controversy. (‘A Babel of insane sounds heaped upon one another without rhyme
or reason,” wrote one of the more temperate reviewers.) Prokofiev left the
score behind when he left Russia in 1917, and it seems to be lost; he
reconstructed it from memory and re-premiered the piece in Paris in 1923, to
equal bewilderment. Since then this concerto has been on the fringes of the
repertory – the RPO last performed it 30 years ago, with Horacio Gutierrez.
Prokofiev was a more experienced composer when he rewrote his
Second Concerto, but he wisely kept a lot of the crazy in. Instead of the usual
three movements, it is in an oddly proportioned four: long and rather ungainly
opening and closing movements bookend two smaller
ones. Prokofiev is definitely playing the enfant terrible in this bizarre but
bracing music. The concerto starts with a broad melody for the piano that
Rachmaninoff wouldn’t have sniffed at, but the younger composer soon comes into
his own, piling grotesque orchestral effects and unending keyboard demands on
top of slamming rhythms and grinding dissonances.
It’s exciting if mostly rather cold music, but it couldn’t be
by anybody but Prokofiev, and it offers many opportunities to an iron-fingered
virtuoso – not to mention an orchestra on its toes. Gomez and the RPO dug into
the grotesquerie of this music – shrieking flutes, thudding percussion, cellos
and basses lumbering like dinosaurs – very entertainingly.
Kholodenko played that opening melody with pleasing
restraint, but when the music heated up, his temperature rose as well – up to a
point. Kholodenko has a big but controlled sound, with no banging; in fact, he
tosses off the hair-raising runs and leaps of Prokofiev’s endlessly inventive
piano writing effortlessly. He seemed to be aiming for clarity and a certain
dryness – perhaps emulating Prokofiev himself, whose recordings as a pianist
similarly demonstrate great virtuosity and a reluctance to linger. Kholodenko
is recording all the Prokofiev piano concertos, and I would be interested in
hearing him play the rest of them – or in hearing him play most anything else,
since he’s obviously got the goods.
Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony, the second half of the program,
required a pared-down RPO – double winds (but only a single flute) and what
seemed like a handful of strings after Richard Strauss and Prokofiev. The RPO does not seem to have played much
Mozart lately, but you’d never have guessed it: this performance was alert and
deft, featuring some silky string playing and beautiful woodwind work, all the
more enjoyable for being so clearly exposed. Gomez took quick tempos throughout
the symphony – the Andante proceeded at a tempo faster than I think I have ever
heard it played, but it came off elegantly, particularly the violins’
ornamentation during the repetitions of the main theme.
The smallish orchestra brought a proper energy and a touch of
grandeur to the finale of the symphony. This movement is a festival of what
used to be termed “learned counterpoint”; Mozart effortlessly combines and
recombines five different themes, bringing them all together in the home stretch.
It’s learned, all right, but it is also one of the most exhilarating movements
in music. It was worth attending this concert just to hear this finale, though
there were plenty more fine musical moments beforehand.
This article appears in Nov 12-18, 2014.
