The Russian National Orchestra is the latest manifestation of the Russians’ eagerness to crash the Western cultural marketplace in their quest for artistic favor and hard currency, not necessarily in that order.
Its founder, music director and principal conductor is Mikhail Pletnev, one of Russia’s most important pianists. The collapse of Soviet Communism at the end of the 1980s gave him a chance to emulate the capitalistic ways of Western music.
By 1990 he had raided the various Moscow orchestras of their best players to form his new ensemble, Russia’s first independent orchestra since pre-revolutionary 1917.
For their Symphony Center debut Monday night, Pletnev and colleagues brought along an all-Russian program that disappointed only in its avoidance of 20th Century music. (The second of their two encores, Khatchaturian’s noisy “Lesginka,” hardly counted as modern.) Instead, the audience heard a lightweight agenda containing three examples of Slavic late-Romanticism by Tchaikovsky and his successors Liadov and Glazunov.
If the concert was wanting in musical substance, it was not a bad thing to behold this fine Russian orchestra bringing fresh energy to music that speaks to its collective soul. These works could only benefit from the players’ efforts to infuse it with a late 20th-Century Russian performance tradition.
The big work was a suite from Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty” ballet as arranged by Pletnev, and a splendid overview of this richly inspired score it was. The selection of nine numbers, following the line of the narrative, linked relatively unfamiliar and familiar pieces to form a satisfying sequence.
Pletnev’s orchestra brought due symphonic weight to such sections as the “Adagio–Pas d’action”– performed as an encore–without neglecting charm, melodic grace or rhythmic lilt.
In the Finale to Act I, the qualities that make Russian orchestras sound Russian rose particularly to the fore. Pletnev had divided the violins, Daniel Barenboim-style, across the podium, and their split-second dialogues fairly crackled. The winds chattered characterfully; the brass sounded clean yet full-throated; the percussion, incisive right down to the lone triangle. Concertmaster Alexei Brunei delivered the extensive and florid violin solo of the “Entr’acte.”
More such debonair fiddle playing came from soloist Gil Shaham in the Glazunov Violin Concerto. The music hearkens back to the lyrical, sentimental side of Tchaikovsky–you would never guess it dates from the same decade that spawned Stravinsky’s “Firebird.”
The score may be second-rate but the performance by the Illinois-born Shaham was first-class all the way. If you wish to hear soloist, conductor and orchestra having another go at the Glazunov, their new DG recording is recommended.
Liadov’s tone poems “Baba-Yaga,” “The Enchanted Lake” and “Kikimora” showed off Pletnev’s ability to conjure colorful imagery and fantastical atmosphere. With its tender string tremolos, “The Enchanted Lake” proved especially enchanting.
