RSNO, 13/11/2021

Strauss : Tod und Verklärung

Ravel : Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (Kirill Gerstein, piano)

Rimsky-Korsakov : Scheherazade (Maya Iwabuchi, violin)

Royal Scottish National Orchestra

Michael Schønwandt

It's always a little peculiar to think that Strauss wrote all of his great tone poems before starting on his operatic career - barring Guntram which is never heard.  They are all youthful works, in which he honed his mastery of the orchestra to perfection.  Death and Transfiguration is the second, it's more a philosophical argument rather than a narrative, a bit like Also sprach Zarathustra, and it's curiously more heavily under Wagnerian influence than Don Juan, which was written the previous year.  In my opinion, it's also about five minutes too long, Strauss lets himself meander occasionally, but when the texture lightens, and the soaring Transfiguration theme takes over, all is forgiven, particularly under such persuasive direction as Michael Schønwandt's.

Ravel wrote his two piano concertos more or less simultaneously, but the D major for the Left Hand is the unloved sibling, not getting nearly as much air-time as the more traditionally structured G major.  While not denying the appeal of the G major, the D major has always struck me as the more interesting, in its one-movement structure, in the density and abrasive texture of its orchestral writing, in the darkly glinting colours and textures of the score, both in the orchestra and piano parts.  Approaches to it can be very varied; tonight's, with Kirill Gerstein as the soloist, was fascinatingly filmic.  I felt like I was hearing the soundtrack to one of those late-40s Hollywood fantasies, set in glorious Technicolour in a fantasy Persia or India, or some fabricated tropical island kingdom, with an exotic leading lady, like Maria Montez.  Obviously, that can't be what Ravel had in mind, that kind of film didn't exist yet, although it could be said that Diaghilev's Ballet Russes offered something of a template, and Ravel certainly frequented those circles, but in its own way, it worked well enough.  What I had against it was twofold; one, I felt that Gerstein was too much part of the texture, and not enough a soloist, for much of the work, and two, in the end it made the music seem a little superficial.  

Gerstein himself put on an impressive show, with few inaccuracies in the torrents of notes, and never at the upper ends - there's nothing worse than a pianist getting the last note of an upwards slide wrong, but it's so easily done - and a good focus, but the piano tone was always a little too edgy for my liking, never really singing.  At its best and most intense, there are undertones of The Rite of Spring to this concerto, a suggestion of some terrible and wonderful pagan ritual summoning forces beyond our comprehension; this was a step back from that, an image of it, rather than an enactment of it, and I felt that the audience, though appreciative, was not truly transported by it.  However, the reception was warm enough that Gerstein gave us an encore, and an unusual choice, though appropriate for this period and as a companion to the Ravel concerto, Debussy's Berceuse héroïque, written in 1914, a brooding, melancholy piece that carries overtones of funeral march rather than a lullaby.  Gerstein delivered this with a quiet power and conviction.

As if Strauss and Ravel were not enough, the evening concluded with another of classical music's greatest orchestrators, Rimsky-Korsakov and his suite of tone poems, Scheherazade.  Like the Strauss, Schønwandt conducted this without a score, yet all the detail was there, in page after page of shimmering textures, a rich, silken tapestry of colour.  The very opening was a little neutral, until the orchestra settled into the rocking evocation of the sea, which lapped around us seductively and perfused the air with a hint of brine. Of the four movements, my least favourite has always been the one which most others seem to prefer, "The Young Prince and the Young Princess".  What's generally regarded as sweetly romantic, I've usually found cloyingly sentimental, and although the central dance section had a pleasing lilt to it, otherwise, Schønwandt was not able to undo that impression.  Otherwise, however, this was an exciting reading, and never moreso than in the ever-increasing pace and excitement of the last movement, until all is swept away by the inexorable power of the sea once more.  Maya Iwabuchi's solo violin was not as opulent in tone as I like it in this piece, but that did not lessen the overall effect.  Rimsky's bejewelled tableaux were well-served tonight.

[Next : 15th November]