Mostly Mozart Festival 2006 (IV): Shostakovich, Mozart, Rastakov, Kremerata Baltica, Gidon Kremer, Violin and Leader, Avery Fisher Hall, New York City, 08.08.2006 (BH)

 

 

Pre-concert recital:

 

Trad.: Indian Ragas (arr. Vlad Reinfeld)

Bach:  Improvisation on a Two-Voice Invention in E major (arr. Andrei Pushkarev, inspired by Chick Corea)

Bartók: Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythms (arr. Steven Kovac Tickmayer)

 

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Concert:

Shostakovich: Adagio from Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Op. 29 (1930-32, arr. Gidon Kremer and Kremerata Baltica)

Shostakovich: Allegretto furioso, from String Quartet No. 10 in A-flat major, Op. 118 (1964, arr. Rudolf Barshai)

Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 4 in D major, K. 218 (1775)

Raskatov: Five Minutes in the Life of W.A.M. (2001)

Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, K. 219 (1775)

 

 

Before the concert proper, six members of Kremerata Baltica offered a half-hour appetizer, beginning with traditional Indian ragas arranged for strings and a pre-recorded rhythm track.  Against the drone, the six musicians created a sort of classical-Indian hybrid, emphasizing the folk origin while shaping with the instincts of a Brahms sextet, all the while displaying these musicians’ seemingly unending versatility.  The group’s inventive percussionist, Andrei Pushkarev, emerged next to offer a version of a Bach improvisation with a nod to jazz pianist Chick Corea.  With a light touch on the xylophone, Mr. Pushkarev was by turns dulcet, whimsical, clever, mesmerizing, and the result was persuasive enough that one might think that Bach wrote for this particular instrument alone.

The recital ended with an arrangement of the six Bulgarian dances that conclude Bartók’s Mikrokosmos, a six-volume collection of works for solo piano.  But here, as arranged by Stevan Kovac Tickmayer, these brilliant gems displayed the continuing virtuosity of this white-hot ensemble, and for the small audience assembled in Avery Fisher Hall, provided a stunning preview of the formal concert to come. 

 

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After a moment of disappointment when the group eliminated Shostakovich’s breathtaking Two Pieces for String Octet, I quickly forgot and forgave when the substitution proved to be one of the most brilliant ten minutes or so of Kremerata Baltica’s three-night stand.  In a slow-fast pairing similar to the Octet, Gidon Kremer first extracted the mournful Adagio from Shostakovich’s acid opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, five minutes of longing with intense undercurrents of loss and alienation.  But lest anyone in the audience mourn too long, the serenity was shattered by the second piece, a furious fragment from the composer’s Tenth String Quartet that showed exactly why this group is one of the world’s foremost chamber ensembles, shooting sparks with a precision and savagery in the playing that were overwhelming.

The congenial Allegro that opens Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 telegraphs right off that Mozart has grown a bit, but any analysis of this education had to wait while Mr. Kremer calmly waited for a patron to silence (yet another) errant mobile phone.  When the seminar resumed, Kremer seemed unfazed by the disturbance, and offered cleanly imagined playing, including more virtuoso cadenzas, all surrounded by the same exquisite dynamic shading and precise attacks that had characterized this group in all of their work.  The Andante cantabile made a good case for being the best of the slow movements of the five concertos, capped by a graceful finale that once again confirmed the composer’s phenomenal growth in the genre.

In Five Minutes in the Life of W.A.M., Aleksander Raskatov opens with a mysterious brush of wind chimes and then, with a Mozart-sized ensemble, continues to confound the genre with unusual sonorities such as the strings playing col legno, or engaging in amusing percussion effects.  Similar to the Schnittke the previous night but with even more broad strokes, Raskatov evokes the period while maintaining a firm stand in the late 20^th-century, thanks to bowed bells, delicate spiccato passages and occasional glissandi. The piece closes with the same gesture on the chimes with which it began, in a dreamlike break between the two violin concertos. 

“Throatier” is the word I wrote as the Fifth Concerto began, and again one senses the more accomplished Mozart (all of nineteen) increasing in confidence and in his dramatic use of pauses to create more sophisticated structures.  The Rondo has an unusually stormy interlude, with Mr. Kremer producing a sometimes almost spectrally haunting tone, before the piece concludes on its wisp of an ending.

I confess that after the previous night’s encores, I was anticipating what might come afterward all evening.  Mr. Kremer has long championed Astor Piazzolla, whose elegiac side was immediately recognizable in Oblivion, a moody, shadowy slow tango, imbued with mist and sadness by the tender Kremerata strings.  This was followed by Mr. Pushkarev, again making his way to center stage with his xylophone, for Fuga y Misterio, a spirited, complex romp that suddenly made my listening companion spring to attention.  With all due respect to the festival’s eponymous composer, she thought that’s the kind of music they should have been playing all night.

 

 

Bruce Hodges