Eun Sun Kim, Music Director of San Francisco Opera, made her Boston Symphony debut in scintillating fashion with late works by three composers – Lyadov, Bartók and Rachmaninov – spanning the first four decades of the 20th century. In the case of the latter two, the compositions were their last or next-to-last, and not among their most popular until fairly recently.
Stravinsky once referred to Lyadov as a “pianissimo composer”. He may well have had The Enchanted Lake in mind with its dampened dynamics and muted instruments. Kim created a atmosphere of mystery from the start with the lake gradually taking shape out of the darkness of silence. Some strings depicted the shimmer and ripples of its surface with trills in their higher range, while others plumbed its eldritch depths in their lower range. Stars twinkled, birds twittered, until darkness began to creep back. Carefully balanced dynamics and spacious tempi made time stand still until the trills returned, then slackened as the vision faded back to silence.
Perhaps because it was composed with his wife in mind as the soloist, perhaps because it is more lyrical and lightly textured, Bartók’s Piano Concerto no. 3 has often been called a “feminine” work. Whether you can gender a work of art would be a discussion for another time, but suffice it to say that Kim and Inon Barnatan brought to light the weight and depth of this concerto with an assertive, dramatically declamatory reading in the outer movements. At times in the first movement Barnatan’s piano thundered insistently at the orchestra, to great effect. He shifted gears and began the Adagio religioso as an elegiac lament which darkened to anguish only to be dispelled by the light of dawn and the power of nature. What followed started out seeming like a joyous pealing of bells from the piano but soon revealed itself as a celebratory and cathartic dance. As an encore Barnatan offered Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov’s quiet, poignant Serenade from his Four Pieces, Op.305.
Kim’s precise and picturesque gestures brought color, drive, dynamic variety and nuance to Rachmaninov's Symphony no. 3. Even her cues were expressive, employing hand and fingers to telegraph the quality of an entrance. She combined a spaciousness and detail reminiscent of the composer’s Philadelphia Orchestra recording with a sharper, tauter rhythmic profile, lending a kinetic inevitability to a score which can easily lapse into the episodic and discursive. The orchestra responded with unflagging concentration and intensity, with some of the finest playing this season from both soloists and sections. This symphony has had its doubters since its first performance in 1936. This performance proved that all such “problematic” pieces might need is the proper advocate.
