John Wilson, Henry Wood Chair of Conducting, leads the Academy Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Rachmaninov’s exuberant First Piano Concerto featuring the Academy’s first Piano Laureate, Emanuil Ivanov.
The evening concludes with Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which shook the musical world at its 1913 premiere, and went on to become one of the most influential works in music history.
Emanuil Ivanov with John Wilson, what a team when combined with the mastery and youthful passion of the Academy Symphony Orchestra.
Rach 1 has never sounded like this since Byron Janis became arthritic.I am of course talking of live performance because that of Rachmaninov and Richter have always been historic recordings that are cherished by all . As Emanuil rightly says this must be one of the greatest cadenzas together with Prokofiev 2 where the piano is given a chance to almost outdo the orchestra. Emanuil came close but he did not count of John Wilson with his sumptuous Stokowskian string playing of subtle phrasing and colouring or the intricate weaving of the orchestra around the piano or the piano wrapped up around the orchestra. A true chamber performance where the piano and orchestra were united in music making of refined musicianship and a style where balance not force was the name of the game. A piano that could just add gleaming comments to the ravishing string playing in a conversation of intimacy that is all too rare these days.
The Rite of Spring was a wondrous tone poem of desolation and searing intensity. To see these young players lead by Emil Hartikainen with the passionate commitment that he transmitted to his colleagues as did Daniel Schultz leading the cello’s . Guzhi Long was the remarkable timpanist who could strike fear and menace amongst his colleagues. As the barbaric fearless playing of the wind and brass blared out with youthful glee the pungent dissonant sounds that probably so upset Monteux’s audience over a century ago. John Wilson conducting with a mastery where the sense of balance and line were so clear as to make this performance almost of chamber music proportions, such was the intensity but also the generosity of the players in a give and take of searing brutality. The Dukes Hall may have seemed too small for ‘The Rite’ but that was without taking into account the musicianship and real sense of balance of the Golden Era when beauty and not brutality reigned with the wind and brass listening to their colleagues in the string section and making wondrous meaningful music together of united architectural sense.
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An offer of earplugs written on the ticket was certainly not needed with John Wilson who could mould all he touched with a wondrous sense of balance and style. I doubt that this Rite would ever have created the furor it did under Monteux. Richter’s preferred Rachmaninov Concerto could never have been played with more Philadelphian sumptuous sounds than these passionate young players . I hear there is a commercial RAM recording of Emanuil’s Rzewski variations described below …..no wonder he has been made the first RAM Piano Laureate.
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 