Early and late Tchaikovsky bookended the programme that Vasily Petrenko, Music Director Designate of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted in the Royal Albert Hall.
The Voyevoda was the first opera conceived by the Russian composer. Based on a libretto by Alexander Ostrovsky, it had its premiere at the Bolshoi Theater in 1869. A displeased Tchaikovsky later destroyed the score (there have been attempts to reconstruct it during the Soviet era). The overture is seldom performed despite already including significant traits of Tchaikovsky’s mature style. Petrenko underlined the skilful orchestral writing and the effort to integrate folk melodies into a Western-style idiom. A beautiful melody, initially intoned only by the horn, tends to turn into a motum perpetuum, with strings becoming more and more assertive and eventually taking it over. A contrasting Andante cantabile featured Patrick Flanigan’s melodious cor anglais in dialogue with the strings while the Finale culminated in one of those well-calibrated but grandiloquent statements that reappear in Tchaikovsky’s scores.
In his introductory notes, Petrenko talked about Tchaikovsky’s changing perspective on fate and the afterlife in his late symphonies and the ambiguous message of the Fifth Symphony whose last movement could be understood as both a “victory of life” but also as a “march of the Grim Reaper through the fields”. It was not exactly clear how well the conductor’s verbal vision translated into the musical rendition. In Petrenko’s hands, the symphony was a well-crafted musical construction that, at times, lacked immediacy. Nevertheless, the interpretation had several memorable features such as the different instrumental pairings in the Andante cantabile, the sinuosity of the Allegretto moderato, or the strings’ warmth. The conductor never rushed the tempos (except the Finale) and made sure that he let individual instrumentalists shine in their many incidental solos.
Sandwiched between the two Tchaikovsky works was Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 1 in C major with Paul Lewis. In an apparent sign of ubiquity, the RPO recorded stream was released at the same time as Lewis’ solo Mozart and Schubert recital filmed in Sheffield. Considering that many a times Lewis’ Beethoven – removed from any romantic grandstanding – represents a true midpoint between Mozart and Schubert’s styles, there was something ironic in this coincidence! Lewis’ playing, with an immaculate technique always subservient to interpretative goals (as in the formidable glissando at the end of the development section of the first movement), was an almost perfect balancing act between contemplative and energetic moments.