A bit of a Pittsburgh Symphony history lesson is in order to contextualize the first piece heard on Friday night’s program, helmed by guest conductor Daniele Rustioni. During the 1948-52 interregnum between music directors Fritz Reiner and William Steinberg, Victor de Sabata served as one of the orchestra’s most frequent guest conductors, and quickly became a local favorite. Though remembered mostly as a conductor, de Sabata was also an accomplished composer, and it was his 20-minute tone poem La notte di Plàton (Plato’s Night) that opened Friday’s performance.
Dating from 1923, La notte di Plàton wasn’t performed in the US until 1968, conducted by Lorin Maazel who, in his formative years, served as a violinist in the PSO (including under the direction of de Sabata) before becoming Music Director himself. Pittsburgh most recently played the work with Gianandrea Noseda, a performance given while he held the PSO’s Victor de Sabata Guest Conductor Chair.
The work brings to a life a chapter of Plato’s biography in which he momentarily abandoned the intellectual in favor of the hedonistic. Wisps of the night air began, introducing a gentle, contemplative theme that blossomed lavishly. One could sense the influence of Strauss, perhaps tempered by the Italianate taste of Respighi. Matters burst into an exuberant bacchanale, encouraged by Rustioni’s energetic conducting. Pushed nearly to the point of excess, the music suddenly retreated into a somber brass chorale, marking the philosopher’s choice to ultimately pursue the life of the mind. Arching strings drew a pensive, meditative close.
The program closed with another view of Ancient Greece, this time based on mythology rather than history, with Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. The composer produced a pair of suites from the full ballet score, and Rustioni offered both of them. In the opening Nocturne, mysterious tremolos were punctuated by virtuosic flourishes in the winds, painting a hazy, surreal atmosphere. In the gritty Danse guerrière, one felt the full force of Ravel’s colorful orchestration. Liquescent flutes coalesced to create amongst the greatest of orchestral sunrises which opened the second suite. Rustioni and the PSO captured the grand sweep of this opulent, entrancing soundscape. The Pantomime saw a rarefied stasis before the gregarious, foot-tapping Danse générale that closed.
As a sumptuous centerpiece came Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto with Kirill Gerstein. Heightening one’s interest in this warhorse was Gerstein’s choice to present an earlier version based upon the composer’s own conducting score, free from the substantial edits by others that appeared posthumously. For those who know and love the work well, there’s some jarring differences in terms of tempo, dynamics, orchestration, and additional passages that were later excised. Nowhere was this more apparent than at the very beginning when the iconic chords pianists often pound out were instead gently arpeggiated – an articulation that perhaps fits better with the lyrical melody in the strings.
Though this version of the score is generally more understated and less prone to Romantic excess, there were still those dazzling double octaves and no shortage of virtuoso demands undertaken by Gerstein in masterful, commanding form. The flute opened the slow movement as a serene interlude, later contrasted with scintillating, rapid material given with élan. The energetic finale seemed more playful and impish in this guise, though the last flurry of octaves was delivered with particular fire. As an encore, Gerstein selected Rachmaninov’s Mélodie (Op.3 no.3), a lyrical, melancholic creation that certainly showed the influence of Tchaikovsky.
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