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23
A fierce talent with his own vision of the music. |
Orchestras
around the world are struggling to attract younger audiences to hear
music that is regarded as decidedly unhip by the digital generation.
The Cleveland Orchestra addresses that problem with innovative
programming and marketing that has been strikingly successful in
taking the music out to neighborhoods and bars and city schools.
Another approach is to feature young artists with something fresh to
say. Several who performed in Prague recently offered
dazzling demonstrations of just how vital classical music can be.
Polish
conductor Krzysztof Urbański,
29, is what Stateside critics would call a “phenom” – winner of
the 2007 Prague Spring conducting competition before he graduated
from the Chopin Music Academy in Warsaw, currently holding positions
with orchestras on three continents, including music director of the
Indianapolis Symphony. Even more remarkable, he’s accomplished all
this with a distinctly different attitude.
“When
I’m onstage, the music is what’s important,” he said in an
interview before his debut with the Czech Philharmonic last week. “I
don’t think about what the audience might like or not like. There
are ways to do the music that I’m sure would help me achieve
success more easily. But there are much more important things than my
career. I’m trying to be true to the music, and the way the
composer wanted it played.”
Urbański
was as good as his word, striding confidently onstage for the first
of three concerts and opening with a formidable piece: Krzysztof
Penderecki’s Threnody
to the Victims of Hiroshima,
a maelstrom of special effects that sounds like time and space are
warping as thousands of souls go up in radioactive flames. Despite
the orchestra’s well-known distaste for modern music, Urbański
drew out a finely detailed version of Hiroshima,
riveting in its intensity.
He
deferred to the orchestra on Dvořák’s Cello
concerto in B minor –
no one is going to come into their home hall and tell the Czech
Philharmonic how to play Dvořák – focusing mainly on tempo and
dynamics, and keeping the volume down to open up space for the
soloist, Sol Gabetta. She played the piece with heartfelt warmth, if
a bit too staccato by Czech standards. More impressive was the encore
she served up with support from four cellists in the orchestra, a
lovely, delicate rendering of Pablo Casals’ arrangement of The
Song of the Birds. (A
thematically fitting choice as well, as Casals often played it to
promote world peace.)
The
showpiece of the evening was the concluding work, Shostakovich’s
Symphony No. 5.
For this the orchestra deferred to Urbański,
who has studied the piece extensively and knows it in a way that few
conductors do. His control of it was masterful, never veering into
the emotional frenzy that Shostakovich often invites, instead keeping
it clear, razor-sharp and expertly crafted throughout. Urbański
showed that he could build tension and volume when he chose to, but
it was his stylish interpretation that was most impressive. If there
was a weakness, it was a lack of the fire that typically
characterizes Shostakovich – a result, perhaps, of Urbański’s
ultratight control. In the interview, he acknowledged that he is
still learning how and when to loosen up and “let the music
breathe.”
The
conductor is a show in himself, working without a score or even a
baton much of the time, crafting 3-D sculptures in the air with his
hands, grimacing fiercely as he pulls what he wants out of various
sections of the orchestra. A raw but exceptional talent, Urbański
packed the house the rest of the week.
The
Prague Philharmonia lies at the other end of the orchestral spectrum
– young (average age of the musicians: 34), open to new ideas, and
unfailingly enthusiastic about everything it plays. The ensemble is led
by Chief Conductor and Music Director Jakub Hrůša,
a rising Czech star whom Cleveland audiences had a chance to see in
his debut appearance with the Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom this
past summer. Hrůša,
31, is a big fan of American pianist Jonathan Biss, who at 32 has
compiled an impressive set of Beethoven and Schumann recordings and
is touring this season to promote the latter, with whom he is
unabashedly infatuated.
Poetry at the keyboard. |
“My
feelings for Schumann’s music go beyond love, though there’s also
plenty of that: silly as it may sound, I feel somehow protective of
him,” Biss writes on his website. “This is first of all because
his music is so deeply personal and achingly vulnerable. But equally,
it comes from my sense that he is subject to a remarkable number of
misconceptions. I want to show Schumann’s music exactly as it is –
deeply poetic, fragile, obsessive, evocative, whimsical, internal.”
Biss
made a convert of this critic with his rendition of the composer’s
Piano
concerto in A minor,
which was at once distinctive and respectful. Biss doesn’t play the
piece so much as inhabit it, following its lyrical flow with great
sensitivity, connecting with its open heart and lush romanticism and
letting the music speak for itself. That’s not easy to do,
particularly given the light touch this piece calls for if one is to
preserve its delicate character. With equally nuanced support from
the orchestra, Biss struck an elegant balance between technique and
expression not only in the concerto, but in his encore, a brief and
wonderfully dreamy excursion into Schumann’s Kinderszenen
– #13, Der
Dichter spricht.
Biss
will be continuing his Schumann crusade in the U.S. and Canada
throughout the spring, and is well worth seeing.
The
program opened with Berg’s Lyric
Suite for Strings,
a 1925-26 work utilizing Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique that
seemed not to be in Hrůša’s wheelhouse. Though carefully crafted
and well-played by a 24-piece ensemble, it lacked detail and bite.
That music should have a sharper edge, and if some of the chords
sound wrenching...well, that’s the idea. Hrůša’s version was
competent but rather too polite and polished, at least for this
critic’s tastes.
Making a small orchestra sound big. |
By
contrast, his handling of the closing piece, Beethoven’s Symphony No.
3 (“Eroica”), was a masterful demonstration of how to bring to
life a grand work with a relatively small orchestra – in this case,
just 37 players. That necessarily means a compact sound, which would
seem to preclude serious depth. But Hrůša has fingertip control of
the Philharmonia, and was able to create and modulate rich dynamics,
lending the music surprising grandeur and sweep.
He
struck a brisk tempo in the first movement, contrasting light and
dark tones and developing a clean, crisp sound, particularly in the
strings, which were radiant. The drama in the second movement was
perhaps a bit overblown in the brass, though not to Hrůša’s ear –
he made a point of singling out the three French horn players for
extra bows afterward. The third movement had a buoyant, playful
quality that didn’t quite carry over to the final movement, which
thundered to a pulsating, satisfying close.
The
audience responded with extended applause, then flooded the
conductor's room to offer Hrůša congratulations. Notably, the crowd
was a mix of both old and young admirers – another indication of
the energy that young performers can bring to a staid art form, and
the excitement they can generate even in a very traditional part of
the world.
For
more on Krzysztof Urbański:
http://krzysztofurbanski.com/home_e.html
For
more on Jakub Hrůša:
www.jakubhrusa.com
For
more on Jonathan Biss:
jonathanbiss.com
For
more on the Prague Philharmonia:
www.praguephilharmonia.com/en/
Urbanski photo: Ole-Einar Andersen
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