In the Pittsburgh Symphony’s first program of the new year, guest conductor Dima Slobodeniouk offered an eclectic selection in which impressions of the ocean served as a connective thread. Opening was the 2017 work by Icelandic composer María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir fittingly titled Oceans. The piece was composed while the composer was cloistered on an island in the North Atlantic, and documents her musings about her surroundings.
Otherworldly, meditative sounds gradually coalesced into a much larger entity, drawing an atmospheric soundscape. Sigfúsdóttir’s writing was generally spare and minimalist, but nonetheless yielded a lush sound, swelling to rich climaxes polished off with a brassy veneer.
Also receiving its PSO premiere was Sibelius’ tone poem The Oceanides, its title referring to the water nymphs from Greek mythology. Softly rumbling timpani were answered by subtle gestures in the violins. Liquescent flutes evoked the titular nymphs. Protean and fleeting, there was a certain playfulness but a stentorian climax plunged into a darker realm. A welcome opportunity to hear a less well-worn Sibelius score.
It would hardly be controversial to suggest that the most remarkable orchestral evocation of the ocean is Debussy’s La Mer which closed the program. The opening From Dawn to Noon on the Sea was shrouded in mystery, and Slobodeniouk exuded a taut control that never sounded merely clinical. The textures shifted in and out of focus as if refracted through a prism, pointing towards a shimmering climax.
In Play of the Waves, the glockenspiel added another splash of color into the pastel palette, and the movement’s vigor captured the sea’s boundless reserves of energy. The synchronized bows of the strings in Dialogue of the Wind and Sea seemed to evoke the shape of the rolling waves. Stormier material pursued, and muscular brass made for a powerful close.
No explicit connections to the sea are to be found in Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto, although one can perhaps feel the ebb and flow of the tide in the winding lyrical melody that opened. Making his PSO debut was violinist Vadim Gluzman, drawing a burnished tone from his fabled ex-Leopold Auer Stradivari, projecting strongly over the sensitive, well-balanced accompaniment from the orchestra. One of Prokofiev’s greatest lyrical inspirations, the Andante assai boasted a long-bowed subject, very much in the spirit of the composer’s contemporaneous ballet score to Romeo and Juliet. Gently undulating, it built to the impassioned, colored by the violinist’s carefully-judged vibrato.
The exciting finale was filled with double stops and piquant dissonances, further enhanced by Gluzman’s elastic playing. Clapping castanets in the orchestra added a vibrant Spanish flavor. As an encore, Gluzman offered a pensive, melancholic Serenade from his Ukrainian compatriot Valentin Silvestrov.
