Bachtrack’s English Editor recently opened a review with the observation, “Another Friday night, another Shostakovich symphony at the Barbican”. The great Dmitri Dmitryevich is indeed a frequent presence on London concert programmes, to a degree that his senior contemporary, Sergei Prokofiev, has seemed relatively neglected. His presence in concerts is often confined to three or four of his eight concertos, mostly the two for violin. So it was refreshing to see a visiting orchestra bring to the Royal Festival Hall an all-Prokofiev programme. Sadly it was also, perhaps, one explanation for the numerous empty seats on view.
The Budapest Festival Orchestra is long established among the world’s best, certainly since 1992, when its year-round activities have included 50+ concerts in Hungary, international tours and operatic projects, while making many award-winning recordings. Tonight’s conductor, Iván Fischer, was their co-founder and is still their Music Director. So one might expect even the RFH’s skimpy digital-only programme to mention the name of this distinguished musician in its title, but it did not.
The Overture on Hebrew Themes was commissioned by US-based Russian group the Zimro Ensemble, who championed Jewish music. It premiered in 1920 in New York in its original chamber form for a (very prominent) clarinet, with string quartet and piano. It’s a small step from clarinet quintet to clarinet concerto one might think, but Prokofiev was reluctant to take it at first. But he succumbed, and the solo clarinet duly took his position alongside the conductor for what amounts to an entertaining ten-minute ‘Klezmer Concerto’. Principal Clarinet Ákos Ács was superb, delightfully idiomatic, but unnamed in the Southbank's programme.
Pianist Igor Levit caught the programme’s notice, however, as did the switch from the initially announced Third Piano Concerto to the Second. Levit was his usual impressive self, technically and musically, in that very demanding work, not least its long and imposing first movement cadenza. Others perhaps make more of its cumulative power, while Levit focussed on uncovering its various strands. He was also intent throughout on playing the intimate passages quietly, but the orchestral volume sometimes covered these. The obligatory encore ensued, but alas the last item in Schumann’s Kinderszenen was sabotaged by loud RFH electronic noises off.
If Prokofiev has had limited appearances in London’s concerts, he is almost omnipresent at The Royal Ballet, where there are admired and often revived productions of both his Romeo and Juliet (1940), and Cinderella (1945). Prokofiev devised three separate orchestral suites from his full score of the later work, but conductors often, as here, mix and match to make their own sequence.
Fischer’s amalgam was less than fully satisfying, since it focused on livelier dances to the neglect of the more melodious items. Thus, for instance, the captivating opening to the whole ballet, and its delightful Gavotte for two violins, were missing. The claim to have been sequenced for variety not by narrative order did not work for the first four slightly similar numbers, and the Prince wandering the Orient seeking the owner of a glass slipper immediately followed by Cinderella’s arrival at the ball, would have confused those who know the ballet well. But small matter when everything was so very well played. And Fischer’s brief fairy tale narrations were delightful. Story time with Uncle Iván, followed by an encore – Prokofiev’s Gavotte, not from Cinderella, but from his Classical Symphony.
