August 21, 2021
Walk Festival Hall
Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Grand Teton Festival Orchestra. Sir Donald Runnicles, conductor; Leila Josefowicz, violin.
RAVEL: Alborada del gracioso
STRAVINSKY: Violin Concerto in D minor
TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 4
Giorgio Koukl | 24 AUG 2021
The final orchestral concert of the 2021 Grand Teton Music Festival, conducted by Sir Donald Runnicles, with the gifted violin soloist Leila Josefowicz, was a very well chosen program in terms of juxtaposing music from various centuries which have in common far more than one might at first imagine.
The common line, as presented by Runnicles in a brief introduction before the Stravinsky concerto, was that of composers who left us quite a remarkable body of ballet music. But there is, in my opinion, another subtle reason for presenting the three masters Ravel, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky together in a concert. They were, maybe jointly with Rimski-Korsakov, the greatest orchestrators of all times, so that every line is a real feast for an orchestra to play and for the public to hear.
Maurice Ravel wrote the Alborada del gracioso (“Morning Song of the Jester”) as a piano piece, the fourth in a set called Mirroirs in 1907-08, and transcribed into its orchestral version 14 years later. Nothing in the quite traditional choice of instruments tries to underline the very characteristic Spanish sound of the music, maybe with the exception of crotales and castanets. Despite this the resulting music is a very lively “segudilla,” where Ravel with only two harps and some pizzicato strings recreates a perfect illusion of Spanish guitars.
Birth House of Maurice Ravel, in Ciboure, France.
If someone should ever ask why Ravel has written so much music inspired by Spain, it would be advisable to look at the house where he was born in Ciboure, overlooking the Atlantic Oceran and a few miles from the Spanish border, in a land where on both sides of the frontier the Basque minority still lives. This was not the house of his family, they were far more on the poor side, but given to their use just for the birth of the child. And so it happened that the boy inhaled the perfume of the ocean and the Spanish sounds right from the beginning.
Runnicles has chosen a very traditional approach to tempo, which maybe due also to the specific acoustic of the hall. It was a winning one. The strange, at least in European eyes, spacial disposition of the orchestra, with the double basses behind the first violins, would need further explanation. Maybe this sounded great when listening directly, but in the video version, where every instrument was reinforced as needed by the microphones, this made no special gain.
The famous big bassoon solo, the awakening of the jester, was delivered with easiness and grace.
Sir Donald Runnicles (GTMF)
The brief spoken introduction of Stravinsky’s Concerto for Violin in D Major by the conductor and the soloist Leila Josefowicz was very spontaneous and tried very hard to explain this not so easy music to the public.
The concerto was written in Nice, France during 1931 and is divided into: “Toccata,” “Aria I,” “Aria II” and “Capriccio.” The neoclassical concerto, written for young Polish violinist Samuel Dushkin after a lot of hesitation, has a signature well present in all four movements.
The story of Stravinsky asking Dushkin ifa particular chord is playable on a violin is well known and probably a legend only, as it is hardly believable that the composer of Petrushka or Sacre de Printemps would have doubts like that.
There is no cadenza, as the composer himself explained: “not because I did not care about exploiting violin virtuosity, but because the violin in combination was my real interest. But virtuosity for its own sake has only a small role in my Concerto, and the technical demands of the piece are relatively tame.”
Leila Josefowicz performs Stravinsky’s “Violin concerto in D major” at the Grand Teton Music Festival. (GTMF)
It is usually not in so high esteem among the violinists, but I have to admit I completely changed my opinion about this score after listening to the splendid, scintillating and muscular perfomance by Ms. Josefowicz. She really has the ability, also with the aid of her body language, to let the people live with her interpretation. Ironic, surprising or irreverent, the words are not apt to describe the pure joy which she radiated while playing. All that she tried to say with words before, with no great success, was said well only through her playing. Clearly the star of the evening.
She played a short solo violin solo piece as an encore, the “Largo” from J.S. Bach’s Violin Sonata no. 3 in C major, BWV 1005.
The last and longest piece on the program followed, the well known Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36, of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
The composer was slowly getting out of an extremely negative period following his disastrous marriage and just entered in the orbit of his new muse, Nadeshda von Meck, who supported him for the next thirteen years. Clearly this new symphony was dedicated to her, a fact which in these times had far more significance than today. It de facto put the author and the dedicatee on the same level of importance.
No wonder, then, that when the first presentation in public, conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein, was far distant from being a success, Nadeshda von Meck didn’t mention this at all in her letters to Tchaikovsky, who meanwhile stayed in Florence.
Sur Donald Runnicles leads the GTMF Orchestra in Tchakovsky’s “Symphony No. 4.” (GTMF)
The fate of this work was far from being a favorable one for a long time. This was due in part to the fact that Tchaikovsky almost completely abandoned the original German-born idea of a strict formal structure in favor of more romantic and free expression of his own sentiments. But not much time passed before this composition entered the standard orchestral repertoire to stay forever.
Sir Donald Runiccles’ rendering was of a very energic, profoundly dramatic nature. He is clearly in command of this music and has the fortune to haver at his disposal a very responsive, quality orchestra. The brass section, so important in the beginning, is impressive as only American players can be.
Surely a great way to end a concert and a season, clearly much appreciated by the public. ■
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