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For violin lovers, this was a concert that could
not disappoint. One could hardly hope for a more auspicious beginning
to the six-concert "Violin Explorers Series," aptly billed
as a chance to "travel slightly beyond the familiar with the
SSO and discover a wealth of beautiful and inspired violin music."
While the title mentions only "Stravinsky's Firebird,"
the two works performed in the first half are every bit as worthy
of attention, though all three were new to this reviewer.
 The first work was Ricercar, from J.S. Bach's Musical
Offering (to King Frederick the Great), in a famous arrangement
by the Viennese conductor/composer Anton Webern (1883-1945). It
begins with an entrancing violin opening featuring the first violin
and her two neighbours. Then the cellos and double basses enter,
regaling the audience - and originally the King - with a mellow
and melodious palette of rich contrapuntal colour that gradually
builds in intensity and warmth. While every section of the orchestra
gets a brief chance to come to the fore, it is the first violin
who leads the entire performance, standing out from the orchestra
almost like a soloist. The First Violins' Associate Leader, Lynnette
Seah, took full advantage of this opportunity to occupy the Leader's
seat to give the audience some truly exquisite violin playing.
In Webern's 1935 arrangement, the acoustic and
emotional dynamics of this work are far from what we think of as
typical Bach, especially if one is accustomed to Bach performances
on period instruments. The work is, rather, a re-creation and interpretation
of Bach's "Everest of counterpoint in Western music,"
designed by Webern "to reveal its motivic coherence" and
express the way he felt about the piece. It is easy to understand
why this arrangement has, according to the programme notes, become
"an object of deep contemplation for musicians." But in
this case, unfortunately, the audience only gets ten minutes for
the contemplation, and is left hungering for more.
I think this was intentional. The audience needed to be cleansed
of worldly thoughts and have their musical appetite whetted to fully
appreciate the next performance on the programme. After a rearrangement
of the orchestra seating layout that intensified the mood of eager
anticipation, Alexander Souptel marched commandingly onto the stage.
Souptel has been SSO concertmaster since 1993, but he was Leader
of the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony from 1980 to 1990. To mark
his tenth year with the SSO, he chose to play the solo part for
Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35.
Korngold was a Moravian-born child prodigy and Vienna-based
opera composer who left Austria in 1932 because of the Nazis, ending
up in Hollywood composing film scores for Warner Brothers. The present
work marked his return to concert music composition in 1945, but
it incorporates the themes from four of his much-acclaimed films.
 Souptel took up his enchanted bow right from the
beginning of the work for a long solo of 29 bars. The mood was warmly
romantic, and it grew more intense as the soloist moved into the
upper range of his instrument, playing with a consummate expressiveness
that quickly had the audience enraptured. When the full orchestra
finally came in, there was an explosion of rich musical colours
like a giant European landscape painting, a passionate affirmation
of the beauty of life. Since he wrote the music in the summer of
1945, Korngold may well have been celebrating the recent demise
of the Nazis, mobilising some of his best pre-war Hollywood creations
to extol the victory of freedom over fascism.
The mood of the second movement was rather different
in character, Souptel's playing remaining gentle and sweet, but with
a touch of sadness, while the musical mood became more quiet and mysterious.
This movement - based on the theme from Korngold's Academy Award-winning
score for the film Anthony Adverse (1936) - gave Souptel the chance
to fully demonstrate the breadth of his expressive virtuosity.
The third movement returned to a fully joyous mood, but with a
carnival-like exuberance quite different from the rich colours of
the first. The soloist was in total command throughout, through
his impassioned playing, his facial expressions, and his bodily
gestures, and this became even more apparent in the last movement
because of the ebullient and uninhibited spirit. After the triumphant
conclusion, the audience called Souptel back onto the stage three
times with untiring applause, but ultimately failed to convince
him to play an encore. Not appropriate for a resident soloist?
Stavinsky's Firebird, originally composed in 1910, is the work that
established his career as a composer, also effectively marking the
beginning of half a century of exile from his native Russia. The
work was written for a Paris-based opera company, but it is based
on a Russian classic folk tale in which a prince captures a fabulous
bird with a plumage of fire but releases it in return for a magic
feather, which he then uses to overcome the evil power of King Kastchei
and release thirteen princesses he had kept in captivity, including
one with whom he has fallen madly in love.
Karsavina as the Firebird in
Paris, 1910
Because the story contains all the elements of an
archetypal legend or myth - a princely hero, an evil king, a fabulous
creature with magical powers, captive maidens requiring a heroic
liberation, a love affair, and the victory of good over evil - Stravinsky's
music runs the full gamut of the emotions, and exploits to the full
the capacity of various instrumental sounds to suggest visual images
and dramatic situations.
Perhaps the most enthralling scene - not unnaturally,
I suppose - was where Prince Ivan declares his love to the captive
princess. This was followed by a great explosion of sound from the
orchestra, ugly and violent at first, but with great power and colour.
This is where Ivan enters the king's castle, holds up the feather,
and the Firebird appears, driving Kastchei into a mad dance that
finally kills him. A return to a quiet and dreamy mood followed,
where a bassoon-oboe dialogue depicts the Firebird falling asleep,
and finally a triumphant ending resolves all of the dramatic tensions
that run through the work.
If there was one pre-eminent star of this performance,
it was undoubtedly the conductor, Okko Kamu, who drew such a rich
and complex piece of music together so tightly and conducted it
with almost perfect control. During the violent scenes where the
evil Kastchei is challenged and finally overcome, I wrote in my
notes, "no audience could fail to be moved by this performance."
The intense and sustained applause at the end proved that my judgment
had not been wrong.
For Barry
Steben, this concert put Russia back on his mental map of the
world, and woke him up for a little while from his baroque reverie.
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