by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2017 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
Last night there was a rare, unusual and surprisingly beautiful
event for San Diego’s usually relentlessly unimaginative public television
statement, KPBS: a San Diego Symphony Concert held “live” on the Embarcadero
Marina as part of their summer series. It was unclear whether the show had been
pre-recorded earlier or just delayed for an hour or two, but it was a great
televised concert nonetheless. It was called “Tchaikovsky 1812 Spectacular” — a
title with not-so-good omens because the 1812 Overture was one of Tchaikovsky’s least favorite among his own pieces (the official title of
the piece is actually “The Year 1812, Festival Overture,” evoking comparison with the later Shostakovich
symphonies “The Year 1905” and “The
Year 1917” commemorating the Russian
revolutions). It was a patriotic potboiler Tchaikovsky was engaged to write for
an 1882 commemoration of the 70th anniversary of Russia’s defeat of
Napoleon’s attempt to invade them, and Tchaikovsky’s attitude towards it
appears to have been, “Well, I gave them what I knew they wanted, but it’s not
something I’m proud of.” When the opening work on the program turned out to be
the third movement of Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” Symphony (his sixth and last)
— a joyous scherzo that, heard out of context like this, is something that’s
going to perplex anyone who knows what the title “Pathétique” means (essentially
“sad”), I dreaded that the whole evening was going to be a series of
out-of-context snippets from great works. Surprise! The “Pathétique” and the
ballet The Nutcracker were the
only works presented in bits and pieces; and, contrary to the impression you’d
get from the title, Tchaikovsky wasn’t the only composer represented: it was an
all-Russian program but the conductor, Samar Patel (the San Diego Symphony’s
assistant music director), filled it out with two of Tchaikovsky’s
contemporaries, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, as well as one of Rimsky’s
students from the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Prokofieff.
After the scherzo
from the “Pathétique” Patel programmed A Night on Bald Mountain (originally a work for chorus and orchestra
Mussorgsky incorporated into his unfinished opera The Fair at
Sorotchinsk, then rewritten by Mussorgsky
for orchestra alone, and finally re-rewritten
by Rimsky into the piece that’s become standard and which is the version Patel
conducted), then two dances from The Nutcracker (the familiar “Waltz of the Flowers” from the
standard Nutcracker Suite and the
achingly beautiful Pas de Deux, which isn’t quite as well known since it didn’t make it into the suite
but isn’t exactly obscure, either), Rimsky’s Capriccio Espagnole (blessedly complete, with all five movements
included!), Prokofieff’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with a spectacular soloist, Ray
Uschikuba, and the 1812 Overture
to close out the program. Patel is the sort of musician who likes his music
fast and loud; I thought he took the two Nutcracker excerpts (two of the most lyrical pieces of the
score) too fast and didn’t phrase
them eloquently enough to make the impression they should, but Patel’s approach
was just right for A Night on Bald Mountain and the Prokofieff concerto (where he was joined by
Uschikuba, whose loud, aggressive, hammering style was just right for the
music: I’m not sure I’d want to hear him play Mozart, Chopin or Debussy that
way, but Prokofieff was writing for immediate impact and Uschikuba’s ballsy
approach suited the music beautifully). He even managed something I haven’t
heard anyone since Arthur Fiedler do with the Capriccio Espagnole: he made it sound significantly Spanish without the
usual overlay of “Russian-ness” that generally creeps into the piece (and has
led me to nickname it “Sangria and borscht”). It’s not as convincing an
evocation of another culture as Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien (another piece on which Fiedler remains winner and
still champ, both on the RCA 1950’s LP on which it was paired with the Capriccio
Espagnole and on the Crystal Clear
direct-to-disc version from 1977 which was pressed on white vinyl and was an
absolute glory both sonically and musically), and as “Spanish” music it hardly
comes close to the surprisingly convincing evocations French composers were able to make of Spain (Bizet’s Carmen, Chabrier’s España, Debussy’s Ibéria, Ravel’s Rapsodie Espagnole), but Patel played it quite credibly and it was a
lot of fun (and a joy in this “pops” context to hear it complete instead of just
two or three movements!).
Before he played the Prokofieff Concerto Patel gave
an account of how and why it was written: Prokofieff had been a sort of bad-boy
“out” at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and wasn’t really popular with either
his fellow students or his teachers. The term was supposed to end with a
competition for pianists at which they would play with an orchestra, and just
about everyone else selected the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 (the big one
with the Big Tune at the beginning that became Freddy Martin’s dance hit
“Tonight We Love”), but Prokofieff decided to write his own concerto, enter the
contest with it, and as things turned out the judges may have hated to admit it
but he did turn in the best
performance and they were forced to give him the prize. The way Patel and
Uschikuba tore into the work, with Uschikuba playing the solo part with an
almost brittle intensity not that different from what we know from the piano
rolls of Prokofieff himself playing, one could readily believe that story! Then
it came time for the 1812 Overture,
again blessedly complete (not just the last 4 ½ minutes as has become typical
in the Fourth of July broadcasts from Washington, D.C. and Boston), with about
eight relatively discreet cannons and a fireworks blast at the end but not the
over-the-top treatment it often gets — no chorus to sing the words of the
Russian national anthem “God Save the Tsar” wherever it appears in the score,
no big ensembles of bells, and just eight relatively small cannon instead of
the giant artillery forces that have been used on some versions. (One Fanfare reviewer in the 1980’s joked that the cannons on a
particularly loud “audio spectacular” version of the 1812 Overture had been fired with such force they had caused a
permanent 7° wobble in the Earth’s rotation.) Patel not surprisingly tore
through the piece — the opening quote from the old Russian hymn “Oh Lord, Save
Thy People” played by the celli and double basses could have been phrased more
sorrowfully and eloquently, but once Patel got to the “good stuff” — the loud
martial music of which most of the 1812 consists, complete with the dueling quotes of “God Save the Tsar” and
the “Marseillaise” — he was in his element and the work was a lot of fun.
It
was also pleasantly surprising that the concert program was allowed to run a
full hour and a half on TV — one of the things that had given me trepidation
about the show was that the KPBS Web site listed it as being only an hour long
(which would have required truncation of many of the works played “complete” at
the concert) — and there was one nice accidental touch during A Night
on Bald Mountain in which just as the music
quieted down for a solo by the orchestral bells, thunder could be heard in the
background: a nice bit of accidental natural sound effects that added to the
terror and chill of the music. After the concert KPBS showed a 2014 hour-long
documentary called Becoming an Artist about the Youth Arts Program, which gives aspiring artists (mostly
teenagers) in various fields — painting, music (classical and jazz), dance, acting — the chance to rub elbows with
established “names” from that field and make themselves feel less alone as well
as give them practical pointers on how they can get their own exalted status.
Alas, I haven’t been able to find a listing for this show online, but it was a
compelling documentary, especially when the young artists talked about being
bullied (especially in middle school) and called “Gay” (whether they are or
not) and ridiculed for being interested in singing, dancing or acting instead
of playing sports … which naturally had me wondering in a few of the cases
whether they really are Gay. At
least one of the young men aspiring to be a Broadway performer answered my
question pretty convincingly when he talked about being bullied in school and
then his final piece, performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. in
2013 (before which he and the other participants had a reception with President
Obama, a privilege I doubt this year’s awardees are likely to get from
President Trump!) was “I Am What I Am” from Jerry Herman’s musical version of La
Cage aux Folles. Yes, son, I’m sure you are what you are …
