Featuring:
- Carl Maria von Weber Oberon: Overture
- Robert Schumann Piano Concerto
- Richard Strauss Symphonia domestica
Alexander Lazarev - Conductor
Alexander Gavrylyuk - Piano
My last concert before I went into hectic period - assignments and exams. How was it? It was .. okay I guess and certainly not the highlight of the year for me. I sat at the box at the left of the hall with only limited view on the orchestra. I chose the seat due to financial reason and I wanted to have a look at the pianist in action.
The concert started with Weber's overture. I am only familiar with Weber from his two piano concertos, one of which (the 2nd) I attended in a concert back in August. The overture is quite popular although I haven't had a chance to listen to it. I approached it with fresh mind and the overture did not disappoint me. Full of melodies, nice build up and the overture concluded with loud bang in the end. There are parts of the overture that reminded me of Mendelssohn's Midsummer night's dream overture, but that might just me.
Now, the reason why I chose this concert - the Schumann's piano concerto. This work played by Sviatoslav Richter, is definitely one of my favorite piano concerto. It's a very lyrical work instead of virtuosic. I always love the main theme of first movements, the little dialogue between piano and orchestra in second movement and the finale. Back to the performance, it started out very well and the pianists entered at the right time (I've seen a number of pianists entered at the wrong time at the beginning of the piece). The tempo is a bit slow to my taste, but still acceptable. The pianist phrased most of the passages beautifully, but somehow the emotion is lacking? - I think. The cadenza was excellent, very much to my liking. The first movement ended perfectly with some of the audience clapped afterwards (!). The rest of the concerto was done very well, lacking a little big again in the emotional burst that I got from Richter's playing. We were given an encore by the pianist, a virtuoso show piece that seriously kicked the shit out of me. I'm not sure what piece it is, but my guess would be Liszt's or Ravel's. By the end of the piece, I'm convinced that the pianist is more of the virtuosic type rather than poetic type. Maybe that explains why the concerto wasn't quite lyrically done.
The last piece, Strauss' tone poem - Symphonia Domestica. I only know one work of Richard Strauss, the Also Sprach Zarathustra. The piece told an illustrious story of Strauss' daily life with his wife and his newly born baby. It is a one movement tone poem which can be divided into four parts. The beginning was good, until it reached the half way of the 2nd part, I'm kinda lost already. Then the piece moved on to the 3rd part which supposedly describing Love scene and Dreams and cares in adagio. I would say this adagio part is too loud for an adagio - it kinda diminished the impression that I might get if it is not very loud. The last part was joyous, and with 8 horns in the orchestra and large brass section, it's really really loud. At the very end of the piece, the conductor suddenly jumped and turned back to the audience, and make the ending gesture while facing us. The audience not expecting that, gave a bit of laugh in the end.
All in all, it was quite a good concert. I love the overture, the piano concerto was okay..the encore piece was amazing and the tone poem was okay again.
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