How’s this for a musical mash-up? George Gershwin at Prague Spring, played by an Italian orchestra led by a Czech conductor. And at the keyboard, a Russian-American pianist who played jazz before turning to classical music. The promise was more exciting than the performance, offsetting fine work by Jakub Hrůša and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia with more comfortable fare by Martinů and Rachmaninov.
Hrůša is a longstanding proponent of Martinů’s music, and his affection for it was clear in an evocative reading of The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca. The three-movement piece offers a kaleidoscope of sounds and styles, which Hrůša negotiated with precision and flair, giving the disparate elements a smooth, natural flow. An expansive sound in the opening movement grew penetrating in the second, with strong brass setting the tone and nimble work on the podium highlighting colorful details. The clanking of swords was audible in the finale's tumult, with animated treatment setting the pace for a high-spirited finish.
Technically, Gershwin’s Concerto in F was spot-on, with a rich symphonic sound framing superb detail work, particularly in the woodwinds, and expert collaboration between Hrůša and soloist Kirill Gerstein. But uneven tempos – rushed in parts, relaxed in others – underscored a rhythm problem. Though not as jazz-inflected as, say, Rhapsody in Blue, Gershwin’s only piano concerto incorporates jazz and blues elements that were entirely missing in this performance. The straight classical treatment never captured the mood of the piece, and occasional miscues like a monumental sweep in the final movement threw it off-balance. Ambitious and expressive, the reading nonetheless lacked soul.
Gerstein is just the opposite – jazz phrasing and blues flavors come naturally to him. He even plays like a jazzbo, swaying in time to the music. After a booming opening, a slower tempo in the second movement gave him a chance to trade lines with the orchestra, highlighting colors and letting the music breathe. Gerstein had to work to keep up with the volume and pace of the third movement, even in the sharp, rat-a-tat piano theme. And the acoustics in Smetana Hall are unfortunately not kind to soloists, so a lot of the finesse in his playing was lost. A delicate encore of Oscar Levant’s Blame It on My Youth gave the audience a taste of what they missed during the concerto.
Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances had the character that the other pieces lacked, with Hrůša weaving elegant, airy melodies and modulating the sound to give the strings a satin sheen in the first movement, and the brass in the second movement an insistent sonority. A more relaxed tempo overall opened up the expression, again especially in the woodwinds. But the real beauty in Rachmaninov’s career retrospective was in the contrasts, with Hrůša showing great expertise and care in keeping all the wild swings in tone, tunes and bursts of percussion from going off the rails. One might have wished for more emotional depth in the reading, but the playing was heartfelt, warm and at times even radiant.
Two encore excerpts from The Bartered Bride gave a nod to this Year of Czech Music and the double Smetana anniversary (born 1824, died 1884). It was a gift to the hometown crowd, lively and rambunctious, and a reminder that with the right spirit and enthusiasm, some musical mash-ups work very well.
