Pianist makes great
music of the ‘Rach 3’Honolulu Symphony concert: Repeats at 7:30 p.m. today at the Blaisdell Concert Hall. Tickets are $15 to $55. Call: 792-2000.
Review by Ruth O. Bingham The Rachmaninoff? Again? After the movie "Shine" came out, performances of Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto in D Minor proliferated, played by everyone from pathetic inepts to ham-fisted egotists. And audiences, in love with the piece, gave standing ovations to anyone still living at the end of the piece, encouraging even more bad performances. I had begun to think the piece best left to once-every-half-century recordings by such as Rubinstein and Horowitz.
Special to the Star-BulletinPianist Alexander Toradze banished all doubts Sunday. What a performance!
The temptation with works as famously difficult as Rachmaninoff's Third is to become so wrapped up in the masses of notes that the music gets lost. In truth, this concerto has more than a little bombast: Rachmaninoff was, after all, showing off, and that is part of what this piece is. Power, speed and phenomenal technique are beside the point; they are simply the minimum requirements, and many pianists with all of those still cannot play this work.
Toradze, on the other hand, created the most thrilling and intelligent live performance of this piece I have heard. Even the opening theme, so often a perfunctory warm-up, became a profoundly moving statement.
Toradze imbued each theme with vibrant character, using a remarkable variety of timbres. His pianissimos shimmered, barely audible; his fortissimos thundered. (Rachmaninoff's Third is not a work for delicate fingers. The symphony's grand piano may never be the same.) Toradze's reddened face and heavy breathing became a part of the performance (entirely understandable), intensifying the impression of him as a Russian bear.
What made this performance exceptional was that he possessed the musical sense to know what's important, distinguishing between bombast as background fill and bombast as fore- ground fireworks. Piano and orchestra interacted with excep- tional sensitivity, with outstanding solos by associate principals George Warnock on French horn and Laurie Lake on flute.
Mr. Toradze, thank you for setting the record straight: A live performance of Rachmaninoff's Third can be musical.
Wong characterized Rachmaninoff's Third and Brahms' Serenade No. 1 in D Major in the program's first half as "two large obelisks," but if so, they are oddly matched obelisks; other than length and tonic, they had little in common.
Serenade No. 1 was composed for chamber ensemble, at least until Clara Schumann "encouraged" Brahms to rewrite it for full orchestra.
Wong called the Serenade Brahms' "first symphony," and it is a charming work full of pleasant surprises, a glimpse of Brahms before he became so serious. While Clara was probably right about it receiving more attention as an orchestral work, I think she missed the point: Serenade is a nice early symphony, but it might have been a great early chamber work.
Typically for serenades and chamber ensembles, wind solos abounded. Especially noteworthy were those by flutist Susan McGinn, clarinetist James Moffitt and Ken Friedenberg on French horn. Less typical were wonderful viola passages, admirably played by the entire section and led by Mark Butin.
Ruth O. Bingham is a free-lance writer who has
a Ph.D. in musicology from Cornell University.
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