In tribute to the anniversary of pianist-composers Robert Schumann and Friedrich Chopin, the NMSO’s latest concert featured pieces by both. The audience could be forgiven for being confused at the program’s title, though, as only the Chopin piece featured piano. In fact, if not for the Chopin, the concert might have been better titled “200 Years of Flute Poetry.”
Schumann and Chopin shared the first half of the program. Schumann’s “Overture to Manfred” was played first. At its best, “Manfred” was moody and expressive, and I was reminded more than once of the symphony’s strikingly melancholy performance of Mendelssohn’s “Scotland” Symphony from an earlier season. However, more often than not, the orchestra (the strings, in particular) sounded hazy and indistinct, like a piano played with too much pedal. The brass section has clearly been working hard, though, and their entrances were sharp and precise, cutting through the otherwise muddy atmosphere of the piece.
The titular piano poetry was presented by Janina Fialkowska, who played Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor. She played expressively and lyrically, managing to make the percussive piano sing more sweetly than the strings that were backing her. As one would expect from Chopin, the piece was very characteristically written for the piano, and Fialkowska brought out a sweeping, majestic quality in her instrument that is seldom heard.
All that being said, I confess that I did not terribly enjoy the performance. This is not necessarily the fault of Fialkowska, or the NMSO, or even Chopin. Rather, I simply dislike the piano concerto as a form. To make the piano stand out over the orchestra, composers must fill their concerti with massive block chords spanning as many octaves as will fit under two hands, and runs, doubled in both hands, that run from end to end of the keyboard. The piano is a bright, percussive instrument to begin with, and this style of writing makes the instrument too bright to blend effectively with the orchestra. Composers know intuitively that the piano sounds comparatively brittle and mechanical. When it is not the solo instrument in a concerto, it is used only in ballet or other percussion-heavy works, if it is used at all. Almost any melody a composer would care to write could be played more effectively by a different instrument. Strings are more expressive, flutes sweeter, oboes more plaintive, bassoons more droll. The brass can play more majestically, and percussionists more dramatically. And yet, in a piano concerto, every melody is assigned to this jack-of-all-trades, making every passage into a music box miniature of itself. This is why I am consistently under-whelmed by the form. While I admit that I was held rhapsodic by Christopher O’Riley’s performance of Beethoven’s “Emperor Concerto” with the NMSO in years past, I will also admit that spying Rachmaninoff concerto in the second half will almost always inspire me to sneak out early.
The second half of the performance opened with Claude Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.” Principal flutist Valerie Potter played the Prelude’s spiraling melody with great emotion, and Figueroa coaxed a shimmering, effervescent sound from the orchestra. The result, befitting of the poem that inspired Debussy, was both seductive and mystical.
The concert ended with Georges Enesco’s “Rumanian Rhapsody.” Based on a Rumanian drinking song, the Rhapsody was lighthearted without seeming frivolous. Its appropriation of bawdy source material called to mind Richard Strauss’s “Till Eulenspiegel,” while the piece’s insistently repeating phrases reminded me of a drunken John Adams. The orchestra threw themselves into the performance, which was giddy, sensuous, and bombastic, in turns. This boozy piece was a great deal of fun to hear, and left me thinking of “In Taberna.” Bibit!
