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Boreyko conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra
Robert Zaller
A fine madness at the Kimmel
ROBERT ZALLER
The Russian conductor Andrey Boreyko, making his first regular-season appearance with the Philadelphia Orchestra, brought an interestingly offbeat program to town, as well as a somewhat wayward beat of his own. Of the four works on offer, three were by composers born within the years 1881-1882, and one by a master 150 years their senior. Of the same four, three also were works whose genre is ambiguous at best, though all were titled symphonies in the program.
Igor Stravinsky’s muse was relatively silent during both world wars. His Symphony in Three Movements, which opened Boreyko’s program, is the major work he produced during World War II, and has often been characterized as his delayed response to it, just as A Soldier’s Tale had been to the Great War. Its strident opening chords and percussive piano octaves convey a sense of violence that was rare in Stravinsky’s music by then. The finale, too, conveys an urgent character, and the C major chord that awkwardly ends it has been taken as a victory shout. Perhaps. But we also know that this symphony was cobbled together out of bits and pieces intended for other works, and much of it sounds quite theatrical (indeed, it is most often heard these days as the ballet Balanchine made of it). The middle movement andante is really a pas de deux, or snake-charmer music as it seems to me, with its sinuous, intertwining winds.
A '30s success revived
Similarly, Karol Szymanowski’s Fourth Symphony, a.k.a. the Symphony Concertante, is arguably that composer’s one and only piano concerto, for its obbligato part (very well played by the young Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski) is so prominent that no musicological hair would be turned in calling it a concerto tout court. Syzmanowski in fact wrote the piano part to perform himself, and referred to the piece as a concerto in correspondence. It was so successful in the 1930s that he feared its popularity signified trashiness, a worry never entertained by Liszt or Chopin. It has, indeed, much virtuosic dash, especially in the finale, and it was good to see it back, at least momentarily, in the repertory.
Haydn’s Symphony #60, which followed intermission, rinsed the palate. It is the joker among his symphonies, being actually a six-movement suite drawn directly from music written for a French farce, better known by its Italian title of Il Distratto. The first four movements comprise a reasonably conventional symphony, but an adagio de lamentatione follows, leading by broken and wildly dissonant chords into a prestissimo finale. Haydn was always fond of false endings, but two movements’ worth makes #60 a symphony and a half, or a serenade of the kind Mozart was to popularize. Of course, extra helpings of Haydn are always welcome, and even a purist can’t complain, since Haydn invented the classical symphony and thereby had full license to do with it as he wished.
A showman or a showboat?
A real suite, drawn from Bartok’s ballet The Miraculous Mandarin, closed the program. Boreyko had a thread here, too, since the theme of Haydn’s Il Distratto concerns a lover so absentminded that he forgets he has married his beloved, while Bartok’s scenario, based on a rather gruesome folk legend, involves a “mandarin” so fixated on his love object that he continues to stare horrifically at her though he’s been stabbed, smothered and hanged. The music, especially in its climaxes, is fiercely Expressionistic, and marks Bartok’s transition to his mature, mid-period style.
The Orchestra handled all assignments with aplomb, though whether because of or in spite of Boreyko is a question. The Russian is decidedly a showman on the podium, not to say a showboat, and he frequently abandons his beat for mere body language. I have a fair tolerance for eccentricity, having grown up with Bernstein’s New York Philharmonic, but Boreyko’s gyrations were so distracting that I had to avert my eyes in the end to hear the music. In his least amusing moment, he pretended to drop his baton during the Haydn, only to pull a new one out of his coat pocket like a vulgar magician, turning to give a fey shrug to the audience. When you play Stravinsky and Bartok, don’t carry on like Peter Schickele.
To read a response, click here.
ROBERT ZALLER
The Russian conductor Andrey Boreyko, making his first regular-season appearance with the Philadelphia Orchestra, brought an interestingly offbeat program to town, as well as a somewhat wayward beat of his own. Of the four works on offer, three were by composers born within the years 1881-1882, and one by a master 150 years their senior. Of the same four, three also were works whose genre is ambiguous at best, though all were titled symphonies in the program.
Igor Stravinsky’s muse was relatively silent during both world wars. His Symphony in Three Movements, which opened Boreyko’s program, is the major work he produced during World War II, and has often been characterized as his delayed response to it, just as A Soldier’s Tale had been to the Great War. Its strident opening chords and percussive piano octaves convey a sense of violence that was rare in Stravinsky’s music by then. The finale, too, conveys an urgent character, and the C major chord that awkwardly ends it has been taken as a victory shout. Perhaps. But we also know that this symphony was cobbled together out of bits and pieces intended for other works, and much of it sounds quite theatrical (indeed, it is most often heard these days as the ballet Balanchine made of it). The middle movement andante is really a pas de deux, or snake-charmer music as it seems to me, with its sinuous, intertwining winds.
A '30s success revived
Similarly, Karol Szymanowski’s Fourth Symphony, a.k.a. the Symphony Concertante, is arguably that composer’s one and only piano concerto, for its obbligato part (very well played by the young Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski) is so prominent that no musicological hair would be turned in calling it a concerto tout court. Syzmanowski in fact wrote the piano part to perform himself, and referred to the piece as a concerto in correspondence. It was so successful in the 1930s that he feared its popularity signified trashiness, a worry never entertained by Liszt or Chopin. It has, indeed, much virtuosic dash, especially in the finale, and it was good to see it back, at least momentarily, in the repertory.
Haydn’s Symphony #60, which followed intermission, rinsed the palate. It is the joker among his symphonies, being actually a six-movement suite drawn directly from music written for a French farce, better known by its Italian title of Il Distratto. The first four movements comprise a reasonably conventional symphony, but an adagio de lamentatione follows, leading by broken and wildly dissonant chords into a prestissimo finale. Haydn was always fond of false endings, but two movements’ worth makes #60 a symphony and a half, or a serenade of the kind Mozart was to popularize. Of course, extra helpings of Haydn are always welcome, and even a purist can’t complain, since Haydn invented the classical symphony and thereby had full license to do with it as he wished.
A showman or a showboat?
A real suite, drawn from Bartok’s ballet The Miraculous Mandarin, closed the program. Boreyko had a thread here, too, since the theme of Haydn’s Il Distratto concerns a lover so absentminded that he forgets he has married his beloved, while Bartok’s scenario, based on a rather gruesome folk legend, involves a “mandarin” so fixated on his love object that he continues to stare horrifically at her though he’s been stabbed, smothered and hanged. The music, especially in its climaxes, is fiercely Expressionistic, and marks Bartok’s transition to his mature, mid-period style.
The Orchestra handled all assignments with aplomb, though whether because of or in spite of Boreyko is a question. The Russian is decidedly a showman on the podium, not to say a showboat, and he frequently abandons his beat for mere body language. I have a fair tolerance for eccentricity, having grown up with Bernstein’s New York Philharmonic, but Boreyko’s gyrations were so distracting that I had to avert my eyes in the end to hear the music. In his least amusing moment, he pretended to drop his baton during the Haydn, only to pull a new one out of his coat pocket like a vulgar magician, turning to give a fey shrug to the audience. When you play Stravinsky and Bartok, don’t carry on like Peter Schickele.
To read a response, click here.
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