Saturday 28 July 2000 Victoria Concert Hall	MASTERS SERIES Gala Concert
	Jean SIBELIUS (1865-1957) Symphony No.4 in A minor, op.63 Sergei RACHMANINOV (1873-1943) Piano Concerto No.3 in D minor, op.30 Andrei GAVRILOV piano Okko KAMU conductor

OVERALL NOISE RATING: 1 (more rustling plastic.)

The Noise Rating Index is a partially-objective measurement of pager and handphone blasts, 9pm and 10pm watch beeps, coughing-during-the-pianissimo-bits, intra-audience conversation and other mind-bogglingly inept noises emitted in the concert hall during actual performance of music. It is measured on a scale of 0 to 5, in increasing annoyance.

Gavrilov - one would either loathe him for his antics or loved him. The crossing of the legs waiting for the orchestra to come in during the second movement, gazing at the audience through his shades with an odd mixture of amusement and "contempt", his queer disco black jacket, his pony-tail, jewelry, rings and chains - just like an Italian mafia boss.

Not the usual sort of character one portrays the Russian pianist as, especially if one had just been to the recent piano festival and listened to Nikolai Lugansky , who typifies the mannerisms of a Russian performer - stoic, proud and to some extent arrogant.

Well I remember hearing what someone said after the concert, "If you did not like what you saw - you should have closed your eyes". From the musical point of view, Gavrilov was everything I longed to hear in the Rach 3. I have always felt that a certain amount of irrational rationality had to be used in the approach to tackling the Rach 3 and he did just that.

 

Andrei Pays Homage to Bach by Benjamin Chee The first thing someone at the SSO asks me as I arrive at the concert hall is, "Have you seen Gavrilov ?" Before I can clarify whether she means if I know where he is or if I have seen what he looks like, she answers herself: "He doesn't look like his pictures at all." Andrei Gavrilov, indeed, does not look like your typical classical musician. Loud Hawai'ian shirt, rings on his fingers, a humungous dangly pendant and a second gold chain around the neck, hair pulled into ponytail and Hush Puppies. Someone could seriously mistake him for a rock star. He has anything but an rock star's attitude when we talk to him, though. We meet four days before his (quote-unquote) Gala Concert and he's wandering around the corridor leading backstage, looking at all the students setting up for a Youth Festival concert. "The Victoria Concert Hall is a popular location for school and amateur concerts on weekday nights," I tell him. "Last evening they were doing the Yellow River Cantata." He nods knowingly at the amount of activity that's going on through his shades. "I wish we could have played to more people," he says, gesturing at the auditorium. His English is excellent. "Eight hundred is nothing, we should be doing two thousand." He may be alluding to the new concert hall at the Esplanade which is going to seat a thousand six. We ask him how long he's taken to prepare the Rach 3. "Oh, about three weeks. You know, I have to prepare about five to seven concert programmes now, it's all the summer music festivals I'm doing." After emergence from his five-year hiatus, it's not surprising that Andrei is in such great demand. We tell him about Friday - exactly 250 years to the day that Bach passed away. He knows it, "And I don't know why your guys asked me to play Rachmaninov. We could have done something else instead, more meaningful." "Why don't you play Bach for an encore, then?" He thinks over my suggestion, then says, "Yeah, I wish I could play all the preludes and fugues. Well, maybe a couple of them; do something in his memory." Friday night, backstage two hours before the concert. I'm finishing a meeting in the meeting room that doubles as the soloists' dressing room during concert nights. Andrei comes in, Fonz-like, and declares, "After tonight's concert, I'm going to let all the orchestra members off, then I'll play the Forty-Eight. Not both books - I don't like the second one as much - but the first one." My first thought was: that's going to take two hours or so. And, as if reading my mind, he elaborates, "Well, I don't like to do encores, and I think it's too mean to just do one prelude or two. I should play the entire Well-Tempered Clavier, just the first book or maybe the first five preludes and fugues. We can invite whoever wants to stay, they don't have to pay anything, I'm doing this for free, and I'll play us some Bach." And so he did.

Going into this concert I did have some pre-conceived ideas of what to expect, thanks to a Hungarian conductor-friend of mine, Arpad Joo. He mentioned to me that Gavrilov was one who could transcend into a certain sense of heightened tension, transmitting that into the conductor and audience, which no pianist has ever done.

From the opening notes, the atmospheric tension was immediately conveyed; with compelling insight Gavrilov unleashed his probing intelligence. There were some harsh moments, especially when played together with the orchestra, but he seemed to be well above even in the orchestral fortissimos. Okko Kamu was in his element and seemed to have clicked with the pianist well, directing with pinpoint accuracy.

There seemed to be this blatant brilliance in every facet of Gavrilov's playing, be it his chordic displays, pedaling, runs or just his bringing out the melodic line in the left and right hands. There was always this extravagance of dramatic display, with the lifting of the hands high up in the air, but all this done with magnetism and excitement.

The entry into the cadenza of the first movement was to me the most intense feeling I have ever got at the VCH coming from a pianist. His ability to hold out the opening chords long enough to bring the audience in with him on this journey, and then the Niagara-like torrents which come after, were to me pure dramatic wizardry. Every note clear, balanced and thought out. The equality of his fingers were awesome and the tackling of the Ozzia cadenza was a model of precision.

Sitting at the piano in a Glenn Gould-like position, it is no wonder why he suffers from back problems (that was the reason he cancelled his last concert to Singapore), but if one questions his sitting position he seemed to get the maximum out of each individual note in this slouched position.

The second movement was well set by Okko Kamu but Gavrilov did make light of the tension by folding his legs, slouching on to the front of the keyboard and even indulging in a little side conducting at a certain point. But when his fingers opened the second movement solo, the opening chord said it all: his Merlin touch moved you back into the music. My only slight reservation would be his tendency to be a bit bright at fortissimo, but made up for it in the pianissimo portions of the piece.

At age 45 Gavrilov seems to have so much going for him, his playing reminding me of the young Richter with all the flamboyance and energy of that great pianist. Gavrilov seemed to love ever minute of it as seen by the way he engaged the audience in his flight to bring the music across.

After the concerto, as promised by the persistent rumours - thanks to Benjamin Chee from the Friends of the SSO for asking him to play Bach - Gavrilov graced us with the first six preludes and fugues, plus No.8, from Book 1 of The Well-Tempered Clavier to commemorate the death of Johann Sebastian Bach.

The impromptu recital began about 15 minutes later to a crowd of "music lovers". It would have started a bit earlier had Kwai Sum (president of the NUS Piano Ensemble), whom he requested specifically as page turner appeared sooner. ( I did speak to Kwai Sum later - he said he had no idea he was going to be picked - but it was a rare honour indeed).

I did not look behind me but judging from the applause it must have been about 80% full [Yes, it was at least 80-90% full - Ed.] - only fools went home, in my opinion (Opps… sorry, people with good reasons).

From the first prelude, every note was well articulated, ornaments clearly thought out and polyphony and phrasing lyrical but not too indulgent. Gavrilov has strong fingers with the ability to do trills with the 3-4 and 4-5 fingers which from my seating position allowed me to see this first hand. Following by score (thanks to Derek who said he had a premonition to bring the score - why he did not know), I could see that his contrapuntal playing was awesome: every voice could be heard and pedaling was immaculately done. The fugues were never aggressively exuberant, in fact there was an emotional gravity in the last fugue of No.8 which he said was based on a Russian theme and jokingly said that it could have been dedicated to Russians. His range of colors displayed a Catholicity of repertoire, there was nothing careless about his interpretation.

After the performance, for those who had an opportunity to speak with him, we asked him about his recordings, his contract with EMI and what was in store. Well if you liked his Preludes and Fugues, there may be a chance in the not-too-distant future of catching it on DVD as he has already filmed it in England...

- Johann D'Souza

How brave it is for Okko Kamu and the SSO to stage Sibelius' most "austere" symphony, the Fourth, in a Gala Concert - and to open that concert with it, AND place it next to a quintessentially Romantic piano concerto!

The contrast was stark indeed - if anything, the symphony proved to be the low point of the concert - which is not surprising at all. At its premiere, at which Sibelius himself conducted, the end of the work was greeted with silence (and bewilderment) by the stunned audience.

For me, the performance of the Fourth is a milestone in itself - five or six years ago, I would not have believed that the SSO was ready to play any of Sibelius' symphonies beyond the Second- they simply did not have the precision and the maturity to do so. At that time, there were even those who said that the SSO could not play all Beethoven's symphonies equally well.

But today, I am proud to say that in the space of the Inkpot's existence, I have heard the SSO play all but the Third Symphony - this is a dream come true for me.

To begin with, I was surprised to see that Kamu had fielded a very large orchestra for what is considered the most chamber-like of the seven symphonies of Sibelius. Six desks of 1st Violins were at stage edge. The result takes a small toll on the transparency of the score - the tone sounds a little too Romantic. There is an upper limit to the range of colours evoked during the performance - a lot in the middle was missing. But that said, I must highlight the fine playing of the celli (evocative textures) and the woodwinds (a frosty Finnish landscape of bird calls). Though the string orchestra sounds a little lacking in personality, it did produce some fierce and chilling sounds in the third movement.

Kamu handled phrasing well, as well as the important pedal work. Accentuated phrases were produced with just the right amount of utterance and force, without overdoing them. Progression of material, so crucial to Sibelius' organic symphonic development, was handled with sensitivity. I liked the way Kamu went without a break between the first and second movements, as well as the last two.

The final movement was the most coherently argued, with very well coordinated/constructed integration of the music. Some sections may have been overcooked, too thick and gooey; but in the end, the heartbreak of the ending bars, that forlorn orchestral sigh, was very effective.

The audience was quiet and attentive throughout (well, even at row M, I did not see anyone nodding off), and made me wonder how newbies to the work felt about it. One person who appreciates the work that I do know of is the author of the excellent notes in the programme booklet - composer John Sharpley. "Beauty portrayed as austere, noble, wondrous, terrifying and rapturous settles deep into the soul", he describes. I couldn't have put it any better.

- The Inkpot Sibelius Nutcase

Chia Han-Leon and Johann D'Souza were two of the lucky people who managed to find themselves copies of the underprinted programme booklets.

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743: 1.8.2000 ©Johann D'Souza, ISN

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