Concert Review                           by Classical Voice
 

OC's Month-long Celebration continues with Kirov Orchestra and Tenor Villazon

By Truman C. Wang
Monday, October 15, 2006

Tuesday, October 10
Kirov Orchestra
Valery Gergiev, conductor

T

he festivities continues at the newly opened Renée & Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Orange County, California.  Last night, the perpetually peripatetic conductor Valery Gergiev brought the Kirov Orchestra to the OC in a concert of Shostakovich symphonies.  The high-octane program was enthralling for Gergiev’s dynamic conducting as well as for the new insights he brought to Shostakovich’s music.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975), the unjustly neglected birthday boy of 2006 in the shadow of the Mozart Centennial, received a golden reception from his hometown band in, of all places, Costa Mesa – half a globe away from home.

The sound of the Kirov Orchestra could best be characterized as dark, powerful, and unmistakably Slavic in quality. It is ideally suited for the dark ironies and unrelenting militarism in the music of Shostakovich. The Symphony No. 6 was a product of Shostakovich’s Middle Period – in which outward optimism was tempered by inner doubts. The first movement was an 18-minute long drawn-out slow Largo. But instead of sounding deathly glacial, under Gergiev’s baton, it pulsated with life and urgency at the first downbeat. The opening bars were taken much faster than normal. The initial shock soon gave way to amazement, as the architectural shape of the Largo began to materialize and evolve. At his best, maestro Gergiev can turn the most turgid, solemn music into something akin to lyrical apotheosis, and in the Largo of the Sixth Symphony he had done exactly that. The remaining two movements of this unusual three-movement symphony are both in Scherzo form. They are filled with whimsical satires and galloping vivacity with a touch of the vaudeville. The Kirov Orchestra players threw themselves into this music with tremendous enthusiasm and bravado. It was the best-played Shostakovich Sixth I have ever heard.

After intermission, we heard Shostakovich’s most popular Symphony No. 5. Again, maestro Gergiev managed to shed new lights into this popular work and created some truly sublime Brucknerian sonorities, notably in the Largo (again). In the many years that I have heard Gergiev, from my earliest San Francisco days (where we called him “the wild man from Russia”), he could be manic and bombastic in fast music, but in slow music he’s utterly eloquent and persuasive.

Both symphonies were played with no pause in between movements. The electricity in the air was palpable, the excitement visceral. It could not have been a better birthday present. Happy 100TH, Dimitri!
 

Friday, October 13
Rolando Villazón, tenor
Bryndon Hassman, piano

M

aking his Western U.S. recital debut, but already with a vast reputation preceding him, tenor Rolando Villazón did more than galvanizing jaded opera lovers all over the Southland.  He also sent the critics scrambling for new adjectives.  For me, that word would be Belcantissimo.

Bel Canto is an Italian term for ‘florid song’, a style of singing characterized by beautiful tone and brilliant display of vocal technique. That Mr. Villazón possesses both these qualities should have been no surprise to his fans. That he was able to apply them to the heretofore unfamiliar terrains of the German Lied was, however, a pleasant surprise to many.

Schumann’s “Dichterliebe” (Poet’s Love), Opus 48, is a collection of sixteen songs with wide-ranging emotions that test a singer’s lyrical as well as communicative abilities. Mr. Villazón stepped onto the stage wearing a loose shirt and open collars, a distressed look on his face, and started to sing about love’s trials and tribulations. For the next 25 minutes, the audience was held spellbound in the presence of a true Romantic Hero.

Physical attributes aside, Mr. Villazón offered some truly memorable lyrical moments. In the songs of hope (Nos. 1 and 2), we heard a gradual swelling and diminishing of tone on the words ‘Mein Sehnen und Verlangen’ (yearning and longing) that was a perfect marriage of music and poetry. In the songs of despair (Nos. 9-11), the voice acquired greater heft but did not lose its essential lyrical and belcantissimo qualities.

Pianist Bryndon Hassman contributed in no small measure to the success of these songs. Even with the piano lid wide open, Hassman’s sensitive playing never once swamped the singer. The two seemed to breath as one.

Post-intermission, the program was a potpourri of opera and popular songs. Of these, Bononcini’s delightful aria from “Griselda” was a real gem. Massenet’s song “Ouvre tes yeux bleus” was delivered with feverish passion and tonal splendor. The Spanish songs of Fernando Obradors were tossed off with great bravado and élan.

The wildly enthusiastic audience were rewarded with no fewer than five encores. As fun and entertaining as they might be, the soul of the recital really rested in the lyrical craftsmanship of the Dichterliebe. It alone was worth the price of admission.

 

   

Truman C. Wang is editor-in-chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the Pasadena Star-News and other Southern California publications.

 

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