The birth of a little boy named Sergei on April Fool’s Day in 1873 was no joke. He was to become the last of the great Romantic composers and an outstanding pianist in his own right. Making his very first appearance with The Philadelphia Orchestra on 26th November 1909, Rachmaninov remained very closely associated with it, throughout the long stewardship of Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy, until his death in 1943. His music in turn shaped and defined The Philadelphia Sound. What greater treat could there be in the 150th anniversary of his birth than listening to this fabulous orchestra, conducted by its Music Director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, with one of the world’s finest pianists, Daniil Trifonov?
The Philadelphia Sound is still there, one of the wonders of the musical world. It is big and lush, but never forceful. The full-fat strings have a velvety sheen, the woodwind a remarkable tonal depth, and in the concerto it was as if the brass kept blowing cushions of supportive warm air through all the other sections. This orchestra simply oozes class.
The Symphony no. 2 in E minor seemed made for these players. Nézet-Séguin took just short of an hour over it, with no first movement exposition repeat, expansive yet in no way self-indulgent. He was a firecracker of energy on the podium, coaxing, moulding and urging his string players on, shaping the long lyrical lines with a sure sense of direction. Many details impressed. Like the weight and precision of the up bows delivered by the violins in the first movement. Or the most beguiling of collective sighs in the great A major Adagio, where later the violas conjured up the smell of roasting chestnuts as the embers of a colossal fire flickered and smouldered at its close. And what unbuttoned joy and sense of abandonment in the Finale, as the heady mood of intoxication intensified, wave after wave of voluptuousness suffusing the orchestral sound. Can one ask for more?
After the 1927 premiere of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no. 4 in G minor, the American critic Pitts Sanborn delivered a scathing verdict: “This work could fittingly be described as super-salon music. Mme Cécile Chaminade might safely have perpetrated it on her third glass of vodka.” What could he have been thinking? The piece has all the hallmarks of Rachmaninov’s other concertos: pianistic pyrotechnics that make use of the full length of the keyboard, heavy emphatic chords, florid trills, touches of melancholy and nostalgia, lyrical episodes contrasted with bouts of explosive energy, and bold orchestral statements such as the composer’s own take on a Mannheim crescendo at the very start. The only thing it lacks is a succession of memorable tunes, the derivative of Three Blind Mice in the central Largo excepted. But it needs an exceptional pianist to bind all these elements together in persuasive fashion. That was Trifonov.
He bounded onto the platform with the most cursory of nods to the audience, leaping onto his piano stool as Nézet-Séguin launched the orchestra even before the applause had died down. It was a high-octane performance delivered with stupendous dexterity, Trifonov hunched over the keyboard almost throughout, Nézet-Séguin throwing him watchful, admiring looks during the electromagnetic accompaniment. What impressed me just as much as all the virtuoso elements was the translucency of the filigree textures Trifonov revealed in the concluding Allegro vivace, almost French in its delicacy and refinement. His two encores of Bach and Rachmaninov were fastidious displays of poetry and passion. I can only echo the words of Ira Gershwin, writing in the same year as the premiere, “‘S Wonderful! ‘S Marvelous!”
