Curtis Orchestra plays Russian masterworks

The Curtis Institute Orchestra closed its 2008-09 season at the Kimmel Center with a concert featuring second thoughts by those two inveterate revisers, Prokofiev and Stravinsky.

Prokofiev spent much of his later years recomposing the works of his youth and middle age. Such was the case with his Fourth Symphony and his Cello Concerto, which were so largely reworked as to be assigned new opus numbers. The second (Op. 112) version of the symphony is substantially enlarged, as is the Sinfonia Concertante for Cello and Orchestra (originally called the Second Cello Concerto tout court).

In both cases the new versions are more expansive and rhapsodic than the tougher-minded originals. I find the reworked symphony less successful than its prototype, although I look forward to giving it a fresh hearing in next season's Philadelphia Orchestra programs.

One of the century's greatest

The Sinfonia Concertante, on the other hand— whose occasion was the appearance on the postwar Russian musical scene of a young musician of startling genius, Mstislav Rostropovich— is so richly lyric and challenging for its instrument that it must be accounted one of the handful of great works for cello and orchestra in the 20th Century.

The 40-minute Sinfonia Concertante was the middle work on a program that began with another recycled Prokofiev work, the first and second suites drawn from his ballet masterpiece, Romeo and Juliet. This was the first major dramatic work Prokofiev composed after his return to Russia in 1933, following a decade and a half of self-imposed exile (and concertizing) in the West. It immediately ran into problems with the censor, and its Russian debut was delayed for almost a decade; hence the suites Prokofiev carved out of the score in an attempt to get the music heard through the back door.

The wonderfully dissonant splash that begins the First Suite can still be hair-raising, but much of the score would hardly be objectionable to Tchaikovsky. Indeed, to think of Romeo and Juliet alongside Swan Lake or The Sleeping Beauty today is to see far more continuity than difference.

Strings yes, horns no

The Curtis Orchestra under Michael Stern displayed its exemplary string tone, from the full-throated cry of the Second Suite's "Romeo at the Tomb of Juliet" to ravishingly fine-spun fiddle work in earlier sections of the score. The horns, on the other hand, were not fully up to the demands Prokofiev makes on them, and, in performance terms, this was the least satisfying work of the evening.

Carter Brey, the New York Philharmonic's principal cellist, took the often fiendishly difficult solo role of the Sinfonia Concertante in stride, producing a sensitive, nuanced performance. One couldn't— no fault of Brey's— keep from hearing the classic Rostropovich performances in one's inner ear though, with their tremendously rich yet rugged sound. Watching Brey hurdle the demands of the score compelled appreciation; with Rostropovich, the demands seemed not to exist.

The program's second half— or second concert, since the 70-minute first half was as long as many full programs, at least from American orchestras— consisted of Stravinsky's 1947 rescoring of Petrushka, for a slightly reduced and more tightly detailed orchestra. Unlike Prokofiev's wholesale rethinking of his Cello Concerto, this version is essentially a refresher course, with the added incentive (always a consideration for the businessman Stravinsky) of renewing copyright.

A year for masterpieces

Petrushka is now almost a century old; it dates from the annus mirabilis 1911, which saw, among other works, Elgar's Second Symphony, Glière's Third, Sibelius's Fourth, Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe, Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle, and Prokofiev's own breakout score, his First Piano Concerto. I can think of no year so crammed with masterpieces (except for any in which Mozart wrote), with the possible exception of 1888, a twelvemonth that included symphonies by Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and Mahler, as well as Strauss's Don Juan.

In all its company, Petrushka stands out. In whichever version you choose to hear it (there's a piano reduction, too, as with Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet), its freshness, vitality and novelty make it the evergreen score of the 20th century. I know, indeed, of no profounder stylistic leap than that between Stravinsky's Firebird and Petrushka, with its utterly new tonal and harmonic language. The Rite of Spring, two years later, would become the signature work of modernist notoriety, but it's a far tamer, more classical-sounding work today.

Forever new

Petrushka, the truly revolutionary work of Stravinsky's genius, is in a way more inassimilable in the best sense of the word: it sounds forever new. The orchestra particularly excelled here, especially in the wind solos and duets, and maestro Stern kept the proceedings going at an appropriately brisk pace. Glinka was tossed in for an encore, rounding out the all-Russian evening with a fine clap. Stern gave the graduating seniors in the orchestra a bow of their own. I'm sure we'll be hearing from many of them again soon. â—†