Symphony reveals
By Elisabeth A. Crean
two faces of Asia
Special to the Star-BulletinTHE Honolulu Symphony Orchestra explored two aesthetic poles yesterday at the Blaisdell Concert Hall: the beautiful and the beastly. Very pleasing to the ear were two Russian pieces filled with extraordinary lyricism, while the harsh, even violent, sounds of Hungarian and Chinese works challenged the audience to appreciate music that was more intellectually stimulating than enchanting.
Kawakubo Plays Tchaikovsky: Honolulu Symphony MasterWorks concert, 7:30 p.m. tomorrow, Blaisdell. Tickets. $15-$47.50, at the box office or call 538-8863.
The concert was the second of the "Legends of Asia" series. It was notable that much of the music came from Russia, a country we think of as European, but whose territory stretches across the Asian continent.
Alexander Borodin's short tone poem, "In the Steppes of Central Asia," provided an elegant and wistful opening for the concert. When Borodin wrote the piece in 1876, the Russian Empire was consolidating its imperial dominion over Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan and Kazahkstan (which didn't break from Russian rule until the early 1990s).
The tone poem's two melodies, one Russian and one Asiatic, intersected and harmonized peacefully. While this represented an idealized vision of a benevolent colonialism, it nonetheless made for a gorgeous few minutes of music. The HSO evoked a poignant quality from the Romantic melodies.
At the close of the concert, 16-year-old violinist Tamaki Kawakubo gave an exuberant performance of Piotr Tchaikovsky's "Violin Concerto in D Major," tackling one of the best known and most often played pieces of the violin repertoire with gusto and grace.
The frequent knock on young virtuosos is that they have mastered the technical demands of a piece but lack the ability to interpret the music maturely. Kawakubo demonstrated a sophisticated musical understanding in addition to solid technique.
Throughout the concerto, the baton of Samuel Wong kept the orchestra a few decibels quieter than many conductors would. This allowed the audience to appreciate all the nuances of Kawakubo's delicate playing. She had a very light touch with her bow, seeming almost to draw the music from the air around her rather than from the instrument's strings.
Between the Russian bookends of great beauty, the orchestra explored a darker side of musical expression. A harsh and feverish energy characterized Chen Yi's "Ge Xu (Antiphony)" and Bela Bartok's "The Miraculous Mandarin Suite." Wong pointed out that "like a Picasso" these pieces were not meant to be pretty.
Wong called the piece by Chen Yi -- a woman who survived brutal forced labor during China's Cultural Revolution -- "a triumph of the human spirit." She expressed the violence of her experiences in booming, frenzied percussion passages and through rumbling, unresolved dissonances.
As Wong promised, the Bartok created the atmosphere of a "tremendous nightmare." Driving rhythms and crashingly loud passages generated the momentum behind the piece's relentless despair. Although the the performance was well executed, the piece was too disturbing to be enjoyable.
Challenging solo and ensemble passages in the Chen Yi and Bartok, however, showcased four of the HSO's longtime treasures: Scott Anderson, clarinet; Stuart Chafetz, timpani; Jim Decker, trombone; and Constance Uejio, harp.
