The Curtis Symphony Orchestra at the Kimmel Center (2nd review)

The concerto is an intensely emotional piece that doesn’t court popularity by expressing comfortable feelings. It’s an exciting, colorful work, but the emotions that energize it are harsh and demanding. Penderecki knows the violin and the viola can sing, but they mostly play fervently. When they do sing, they sound poignant and mournful rather than sweet.

The orchestra adds dashes of color and comment, with the exception of a few moments when it goes full blast. The two soloists play unaccompanied for approximately 20 percent of the concerto’s length.

The concerto is so emotional it made me wonder what Penderecki is being emotional about. Penderecki hasn’t offered any clues, so I could only relate to it as a general expression of a certain kind of feeling, similar to how I listen to the grand finale of this concert, Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” symphony. Tchaikovsky’s symphonies grip us with that same powerful combination of grand passion and fascinating music, but we never wonder about the roots of the emotions Tchaikovsky is expressing. He expresses feelings we can all relate to, and we’re content to leave it at that.

Biographers have tried to relate the “Pathétique” to the fact that Tchaikovsky died shortly after he composed it, but there is no evidence he had any idea he was going to die. The legend that he committed suicide seems to have been discredited. His comments around the time he finished the symphony even indicate he was buoyed by the feeling that “never in my life have I been so pleased with myself. . .or felt so fortunate as to have created something as good as this.”

We may find it odd that someone can feel good when they’re creating something sad, but artists are like that. Their attitude isn’t any stranger, after all, than our appetite for the results of their labor.

Ignat Solzhenitsyn led the Curtis students through a performance worthy of Tchaikovsky’s score. In the first movement, he launched a surprisingly ferocious attack when the big allegro replaced the opening adagio. It could have sounded heavy-handed and melodramatic, but Solzhenitsyn made it sound right. The whole performance reflected Solzhenitsyn’s deep sense of reverence for the spiritual tradition embodied in works like the “Pathétique.” At the end of the final slow movement — one of the most unusual finales in the literature — he held the silence after the last note for as long as he could, standing erect with his baton by his side until someone in the audience finally yielded to the urge to applaud.

Concerts by the Curtis orchestra usually feature distinguished graduates. This event was a particularly stellar example. Solzhenitsyn is a Curtis grad (’95), and the two soloists were violinist Benjamin Schmid (’91) and the current president of Curtis, violist Roberto Díaz (‘84). In the opener, a 2013 graduate, Kensho Watanabe, conducted Stravinsky’s "Fireworks" — a brief, colorful piece in which Stravinsky captured the full range of a fireworks display, from the booming spectaculars to the beautiful moments when a spray of lights hangs in the sky without any noise or razzle-dazzle.

One of the most moving aspects of Curtis orchestral concerts is the sight of all those dedicated young people working at a demanding task. Solzhenitsyn accented that when he noted in his opening remarks that this concert was a kind of graduation for the senior students, since it was their last appearance with the Curtis orchestra. He asked the class of 2014 to stand, and they received the traditional ovation from an audience that probably included most of the core supporters of the classical tradition in the Philadelphia area.

For a review of this concert by Robert Zaller, click here.