ST. PETERSBURG PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
Carnegie Hall
It felt oddly out of joint to have the start of the summer concert-hall lull in New York interrupted on Friday evening by what seemed a momentary relapse into the height of the season: the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, no less, in a one-night stand at Carnegie.
This event, offering predictably sterling performances of Russian staples — Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony and Shostakovich’s Fifth — was part of a groundbreaking international celebration of Russian Day, a national holiday established in 1992. This year premier Russian performing groups took special programs to Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas.
The Carnegie concert was conducted by the veteran maestro Nikolai Alexeev, who was variously identified in the program book as the Philharmonic’s permanent conductor and deputy artistic director. (Yuri Temirkanov, the orchestra’s principal conductor and music director, who usually accompanies the orchestra to New York, was said to be otherwise occupied in Japan.)
The orchestra, though recently overshadowed abroad by its crosstown rival, Valery Gergiev’s Mariinsky Orchestra, has long been great, and it sounded that way here. As with many ensembles, some old local color has given way to a more cosmopolitan sound, but the string sonority tends to be lusciously dark, the woodwinds still cluck and chuckle at times and the brasses retain much of their swagger.
Character often seems to count for more than precision, as in the pizzicato Scherzo of the Tchaikovsky, where the strings, for all their manic plucking, laid down a plush carpet of sound. The Shostakovich, in its nervous questioning and putative triumph, sounded thoroughly lived in.
After two works that typically conclude programs, with their clamorous endings, an encore was surely warranted, and Mr. Alexeev and company lowered the temperature with a quirky little waltz from Shostakovich’s lark of a musical, “Hypothetically Murdered.”
Given the volatility of its standing on the world scene in recent years, Russia may have picked either the worst or the best time to take Russian Day international. A small cadre of people protesting the policies of Vladimir V. Putin held forth outside the hall before the concert, but a full house of listeners inside, many of them speaking Russian, seemed thoroughly pleased. JAMES R. OESTREICH
CHELSEA MUSIC FESTIVAL
Canoe Studios
Even in a multimedia world, a true feast for the senses is rare. The Chelsea Music Festival works hard to cater even to olfactory needs, offering guests an earthy, floral scent called Finno-Ugric OsmoLanguage No. 5 in honor of this year’s Finnish-Hungarian theme.
Such touches can be gimmicky, but they are quirky complements to the festival’s thematic offerings in light of the thoughtful programming and dynamic music making.
The opening-night program, held in the loft-like Canoe Studios, with its sprawling views of Lower Manhattan and the East River, was a tribute to the 150th anniversary of the birth of Jean Sibelius. From the 12th century to the early 19th century, Finland was controlled by Sweden; Sibelius, who was born in Finland, grew up speaking Swedish, his Finnish identity later forming a crucial element of his compositional output.
The violinists Lisa Lee and Alex Shiozaki, the pianist Helen Huang and the cellist Angela Lee offered an elegantly shaped rendition of Sibelius’s Piano Quartet in C minor (1891), marred only by the clatter from the kitchen next door as the Finnish chef Sami Tallberg prepared the evening’s Finland-inspired menu.
Sibelius’s national identity is more clearly marked in his lyrical, sweet-natured “Andante Festivo” (1922), given a passionate, rousing rendition by a string ensemble conducted by Ken-David Masur, one of the festival’s artistic directors. The work was paired with Rautavaara’s dark-hued, “Finnish Myth” (1977), whose tense undercurrents were revealed with sizzling energy here.
Contemporary music is an important facet of the festival: The flutist Malla Vivolin, the violist Derek Mosloff and the pianist Emil Holmstrom performed the premiere of “Cameo” by the Finnish composer Ilari Kaila, inspired by the polyrhythms of 1970s progressive rock and the Carnatic music of southern India. Written as a celebration of Finland’s cosmopolitan outlook, the engaging piece features jaunty flute fragments, a soulful piano part and thick, rumbling textures.
The concert concluded with a terrific rendition of Bartok’s Piano Quintet by the violinists Tessa Lark and Amy Galluzzo, Mr. Mosloff, the cellist Michael Dahlberg and the pianist Nicolas Namoradze, whose sensitivity and coloristic playing enhanced the bristling, high-energy performance. VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
GREGG KALLOR
SubCulture
With its unstuffy, contemporary vibe and serious focus on quality live music, SubCulture in the East Village is a welcome recent addition to the classical scene. The pianist and composer Gregg Kallor seems a natural choice as its inaugural composer in residence. At home in both jazz and classical forms, he writes music of unaffected emotional directness. Leavened with flashes of oddball humor, his works succeed in drawing in the listener — not as consumer or worshipful celebrant, but in a spirit of easygoing camaraderie.
On Thursday, Mr. Kallor shared the stage with the violinist Miranda Cuckson and the cellist Joshua Roman in a program of chamber music that showed a strong vocal quality in Mr. Kallor’s writing for strings. In “Short Stories” for violin and piano and “Undercurrent” for cello and piano, Mr. Kallor was at his most assured in the lyrical passages that combined a suave melodic line with a hint of subcutaneous sadness. These moments brought out the rich sweetness of Mr. Roman’s effortlessly expressive tone. Ms. Cuckson, a fiercely virtuosic new-music specialist with a lean, slightly tart sound, appeared most comfortable in the fast and rhythmic passages.
Mr. Roman revealed a playful zest for exploration in his own composition, “Riding Light,” for solo cello, a propulsive work that mined the full technical range of the instrument with only the briefest echoes of Bach.
The three musicians came together for Mr. Kallor’s “An Unbelievably True Story,” a suite of five movements, which for all their melodic pleasantness and rhythmic spritz, left only a fleeting impression.
CORINNA DA FONSECA-WOLLHEIM
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