Tag Archives: Sergei Prokofiev

In concert – Yeol Eum Son, CBSO / Jonathon Heyward: Still, Prokofiev & Sibelius

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Yeol Eum Son (piano, below), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Jonathon Heyward (above)

Still Threnody: In Memory of Jean Sibelius (1965)
Prokofiev Piano Concerto no.2 in G minor Op.16 (1912-13, rev. 1923)
Sibelius Symphony no.5 in E flat major Op.82 (1914-19)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 24 October 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Laura Tiesbrummel (Jonathon Heyward), Marco Borggreve (Yeol Eum Son)

American by nationality, and currently music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Jonathon Heyward is no stranger to orchestras in the UK and this afternoon’s appearance with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra confirmed a rapport that will hopefully continue in future seasons.

His symphonic output may now be well covered by recordings, but performances of William Grant Still remain infrequent such that his Threnody came as a welcome novelty. Dedicated to Sibelius in the anniversary year of his birth, this finds its composer in understandably sombre mood (akin to that of his masterly concertante piece Dismal Swamp from two decades earlier) and, while there is little about its content that recalls the Finnish master, the interplay between elegy and processional is effectively handled through to its subdued yet highly affecting close.

It might not have enjoyed the popularity of its successor, but the CBSO has given memorable accounts of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto over the decades and the present reading with Yeol Eum Son (above) was as good as it gets in a piece that does not make things easy technically or interpretatively. Starting reticently, the opening movement duly hit its stride in the capricious second theme before the orchestra made way for Son’s electrifying take on a cadenza which encompasses development and reprise; the orchestra’s climactic return being no less visceral.

Wresting coherence out of the unlikely formal design of this work is hardly an easier task but, here again, there was no doubting Son’s insight as she fairly tore through its Scherzo without loss of clarity; she and Heyward then drawing abrasive irony out of an intermezzo which can easily descend into caricature. Nor was there any lack of focus with a Finale whose headlong outer sections frame one of folk-tinged pathos – afforded a cumulative intensity only outdone by the propulsive closing stage where soloist, orchestra and conductor were thrillingly as one.

If the reading of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony after the interval did not quite maintain this level of excellence, it was no also-ran as a performance. Heyward might have observed the Tempo molto moderato of its initial movement more literally, as his swift underlying pace made for too precipitate a climax into its scherzo-like second half. The accelerating transition between them was adeptly managed, but there was little room left for manoeuvre during the approach to a coda where not even the CBSO’s unfazed commitment could gain the necessary velocity.

Neither did the second movement lack forward motion, though here Heyward found a viable balance between the andante and allegretto elements – its (mostly) ingratiating poise abetted by felicitous playing from CBSO woodwind. Setting off impulsively, the finale rather lacked eloquence in its ‘swan theme’ but the resourceful evolution of its material was never in doubt. Other performances have conveyed greater emotional breadth thereafter yet, as those indelible six closing chords unfolded, there could be no doubting their decisiveness as parting gestures. Overall, then, this was impressive music-making with Heyward evidently a conductor on a mission. Next Wednesday brings a programme of Spanish evergreens conducted by Kazuki Yamada, with Miloš Karadaglić taking centre-stage in a certain guitar concerto by Rodrigo.

For details on the 2024-25 season A Season of Joy, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about pianist Yeol Eum Son and conductor Jonathon Heyward – and for a special website devoted to composer William Grant Still

Published post no.2,345 – Monday 28 October 2024

In concert – Martin Fröst, Janine Jansen, LSO / Gianandrea Noseda: Lost and Found @ Barbican Hall

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Martin Fröst (clarinet), Janine Jansen (violin), London Symphony Orchestra / Gianandrea Noseda

Beethoven Leonore Overture no.3 Op.72b (1806)
Beamish Distans: Concerto for violin and clarinet (UK premiere) (2023)
Prokofiev Symphony no.7 in C# minor Op.131 (1952)

Barbican Hall, London
Thursday 20 June 2024

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Pictures (c) Mark Allan

The London Symphony Orchestra and their principal guest conductor Gianandrea Noseda continued their Prokofiev symphony cycle with the elusive Seventh, prefaced by one of Beethoven’s four operatic overtures and a finally realised UK premiere.

This was Distans, a co-commission between four orchestras for Sally Beamish to write a concerto for the unusual combination of clarinet and violin. Its first performance was delayed due to the pandemic, which became the inspiration for the content of the work. Themes of separation run through the three movements, drawing on the composer’s Swedish and Scottish connections. Separated from her children during lockdown, Beamish also used the forceful musical personalities of soloists Martin Fröst and Janine Jansen (both above) for inspiration.

The two began offstage, however, beckoning to each other across the Barbican Hall as Calling, the first movement, took shape. This was named in the concert notes as ‘kulning’, “the high-pitched singing of women calling the calls on remote pastures”. Beamish’s wide-angle musical lens produced an effective and touching first paragraph, the soloists eventually united on stage in music of the dance, evoking a Swedish fiddle with the full weight and energy of the orchestra in support.

Echoing, the slow second movement, explored more intense feelings of isolation through beautiful scoring, earthy cellos and metallic percussion casting a rarefied light suggesting a Swedish winter. The third movement, Journeying, was powered by an ancient march, the soloists together in spirit and melody, out in the elements with the orchestra. Although the music of beckoning reappeared, the mood was one of reunification, the soloists now at peace and content to remain on stage.

Distans made a strong impact in the hall, and Beamish’s writing for clarinet in her first major piece for the instrument made the most of Martin Fröst’s extraordinary breath control and agility. Jansen also fully inhabited the spirit of the piece, though her part often felt within that of the clarinet, and rarely used the high register. This was definitely a work to hear again, for Beamish’s sound world is a very attractive one in concert.

After the interval, Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony was given an affectionate performance, yet one that also found the darkness lurking within. One of Prokofiev’s final works, the Seventh was written for the Soviet Children’s Radio Division, and as a result adopts a youthful stance, with commendably little room for nostalgia. Instead the composer gets up to his characteristically witty tricks, with inventive scoring enjoyed by the orchestra as woodwind doubled in octaves, and the piano and harp supplemented lower strings.

The music danced, a reminder of Prokofiev’s balletic qualities. The second movement Allegretto had poise in its first tune but a heavier swagger in the second, suggesting the unpredictable movements of older age – though an impressively powerful and assured close was reached. The following Andante enjoyed rich string colours, together with brilliant individual characterisations from oboe (Juliana Koch) and cor anglais (Clément Noël).

Yet the abiding memories came from two themes used in the outer movements. The first, a sweeping unison for orchestra, lovingly recreates the key and spirit of the composer’s first piano concerto, one of his greatest early successes – and was delivered with great charm here. The second, a cautionary motif from flute and glockenspiel resembling a ticking clock, returned like a regretful memory at the end – reminding this listener of an equivalent moment in Shostakovich’s last symphony, completed nearly 20 years later. It ended this performance on a thoughtful note, in spite of the exuberance that had gone before. The LSO were excellent throughout, presenting a convincing case for the Seventh as a bittersweet triumph, and reminding us in the process of Prokofiev’s abundance as a melodic composer.

Meanwhile Beethoven’s Leonore Overture no.3 began in a more desperate mood of resignation, the opera’s main character Florestan losing all hope in prison. Noseda – fresh from recording a symphony cycle with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington – has very strong Beethovenian instincts, and paced this just right, with an appropriate hush falling over the hall. As the drama heightened, and an evocative offstage trumpet beckoned, the release from prison led to an outpouring of joy, sweeping us up in its forward momentum. The players were off the leash, enjoying every second.

You can find more information on further 2023/24 concerts at the London Symphony Orchestra website

Published post no.2,216 – Friday 21 June 2024

In appreciation – Maurizio Pollini

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by Ben Hogwood. Picture (c) Matthias Bothor / DG

Yesterday we heard the sad news of the death of the great Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini, at the age of 82.

You can read a number of tributes to Pollini, by Barry Millington on the Guardian website and by HarrisonParrott, his agents.

Throughout his career Pollini recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, leaving a succession of remarkable recordings ranging from a famous early collection of the Chopin Etudes through to pioneering modern collections, with a landmark LP of works by Schoenberg and a 20th century collection of Stravinsky, Webern, Boulez and Prokofiev. The playlist below is a personal selection of favourites and a memory from seeing Pollini play Schumann‘s Fantasie in C major at the Royal Festival Hall.

Published post no.2,127 – Saturday 24 March 2024

A quick note: Unknown Prokofiev

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by Ben Hogwood

Yesterday lunchtime I listened on BBC Radio 3 to a very fine recital from London’s Wigmore Hall by pianist Elisabeth Brauss. It was a typically inventive hour including music by Beethoven, Albéniz and Prokofiev (above) that you can listen to by clicking on BBC Sounds

The Prokofiev chosen was an early work, a selection of eight pieces from the ten the composer published as Op.12 in 1913. It put me in mind of a huge amount of piano music by the composer that goes under the radar, left in the shadow of the nine piano sonatas and the famous transcriptions from ballets Romeo & Juliet and Cinderella.

Here, then, is a celebration of those pieces – performed by Frederic Chiu. They show the composer getting into his stride, with plenty of wit, but a soft centre too:

Inspired by this discovery, I have gone on to purchase some of the composer’s other collections of pieces, including the Music for Children. I will report back at a later date on those, I expect!

In concert – Cleveland Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst @ Carnegie Hall: Prokofiev & Webern symphonies

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Prokofiev’s trademark technicolour orchestration contrasted with Webern’s sparse score for his Symphony Op.21 performed by the Cleveland Orchestra with Franz Welser-Möst.

Cleveland Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst

Prokofiev Symphony No. 2 in D Minor Op. 40 (1924-1925)
Webern Symphony, Op. 21 (1927-1928)
Prokofiev Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, Op. 100 (1944)

Carnegie Hall, United States
Sunday 21 January 2024

Reviewed by Jon Jacob. Photo (c) Jon Jacob

Most concerts start with some kind of concert opener. An overture, for example, gives the band on stage the opportunity to get accustomed to the acoustic with an audience in it, while giving the audience a chance to settle down before the main event. That the Cleveland Orchestra got underway so deftly with the epic industrial landscape of Prokofiev’s Second Symphony immediately hinted at the kind of concert this would turn out to be. 

Conducted by their music director, Austrian conductor Franz Welser-Most, the Cleveland Orchestra presented three works as part of Carnegie Hall’s ongoing series examining the fall of the Weimar Republic: two symphonies by Russian composer Prokofiev, contrasted with Webern’s Symphony for chamber ensemble. 

Prokofiev’s Second Symphony, written in 1924 and premiered in Paris in 1925, is an epic work brimming with fiendish detail and tantalising textures. The first movement’s brutal industrial landscape is depicted with a gargantuan, lumbering brass section, piercing brass top lines, and occasionally shrill woodwind. The combination did at times cause the person sat next to me at Carnegie Hall to put her fingers in her ears. This was contrasted by a tender oboe solo at the beginning of the short second movement theme, followed by a series of short variations which saw a remarkable range of colours and textures from the strings and woodwind. This was a polished, confident and assertive performance throughout, right from the start.  

In contrast, the material in the Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, written in 1944 when the composer had returned to the Soviet Union, is lighter and the treatment of it far more playful, energetic and in places vigorous. In the performance, the orchestra sometimes sounded underpowered meaning things felt overly romantic. The second movement Allegro had spirit and bounce, moving through multiple personalities and moods, cheerful, cheeky and, from to time, just a hint of macabre too, though, like the final movement, it did feel like it lacked a bit of grit. After Franz Welser-Most paused for a police siren to disappear out of earshot down 7th Avenue, the third movement opened with tantalizingly papery strings over which the solo was passed effortlessly between different combinations of woodwind instruments whilst still making everything feel whole. Later we heard rich, warm, heart-tugging string sounds (the leaps in the upper strings got me every single time).

Webern’s ‘miniature’ ten-minute, two-movement Symphony, written three years after Prokofiev’s Second Symphony, could have sounded like an academic curiosity in comparison to the Russian composer’s technicolour orchestration. Yet in this concert, Webern’s Op. 21 acted as a palette cleanser, pivoting us from the epic Second to the more box-office appealing Fifth of Prokofiev’s symphonies.

Special praise to Cleveland’s principal clarinet Afendi Yusuf, whose rounded burgundy tone was simply to die for. A gorgeous sound throughout. Excitable applause also for some fruity queues from bass clarinetist Amy Zoloto and contrabasoonist Jonathan Sherwin.

Further listening

Some recommended recordings to listen to are based simply on the final movement allegro which in the case of Herbert von Karajan’s Berlin Philharmonic recording is a tour-de-force. On the other hand, in Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony’s performance, there’s a crazed sense of menace. In concert, Franz Welser-Most seemed to pull out a more playful character in the final movement and this is also reflected in the Cleveland’s 2023 recording under his direction. I’m always going to prefer the unhinged characterisation, but that probably says more about my character than it does about the performance.

Meanwhile the Cleveland Orchestra recorded Webern’s Symphony as part of an album devoted to the composer’s orchestral music, under their former music director Christoph von Dohnányi in 1998.

Jon Jacob is a writer, digital content producer and strategist, authors the Thoroughly Good Classical Music Blog, and produces the Thoroughly Good Podcast.

Published post no.2,064 – Monday 22 January 2024