October 5 & 7, 2023
Atlanta Symphony Hall, Woodruff Arts Center
Atlanta, Georgia – USA
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
Nathalie Stutzmann, conductor; Xavier de Maistre, harp.
Pyotr TCHAIKOVSKY: Overture from The Queen of Spades, Op. 68
Pyotr TCHAIKOVSKY: Polonaise from Eugene Onegin, Op. 24
Aleksandr MOSOLOV: Harp Concerto
Pyotr TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36
Mark Gresham | 9 OCT 2023
With a single upward gesture of her left arm as she strode on stage, the crisp, sustained snare drum roll commenced, bringing the audience to attention and to their feet as Natalie Stutznmann ascended the podium and, without pause, began to lead the orchestra and audience in a time-honored tradition: launching the new season of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in the U.S. national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner.
Energized, upbeat, and patriotic, the music lifted the spirits, offering a symbolic positive omen for the coming season, officially Stutzmann’s second as music director of the ASO, but the first with a full docket of concerts that the role calls for. The drama of how the high expectations will play out over the coming year began with that anthem on Thursday night, and the classical music world is watching.
Two excerpts from operas by Tchaikovsky opened the program proper: The Overture from The Queen of Spades and the Polonaise that opens Act III of Eugene Onegin, performed back to back, without a break between. In its original context, the end of the dramatic, four-minute Overture serves as an anacrusis to the opera’s first scene so that it would sound unfinished, played alone. The segue of its quiet ending to the introductory fanfare of the energetic five-minute Polonaise works quite well, fusing the two into an effective nine minutes with which to begin. For those who read music, here’s how the joining of those scores appears in a condensed score:
A fortuitous matchup: The final measures of Tchaikovsky’s Overture to “The Queen of Spades” followed by the opening measures of the Polonaise from “Eugene Onegin.”
Based on her local track record with the ASO to date, such operatic fare has shown itself to be Stutzmann’s strongest suit, especially when significant passages of bluster and bravado are involved in the score. This particular pairing went rather well.
Stutzmann also had the orchestra seated with first and second violins across from each other at the front of the orchestra rather than in their long-accustomed manner with the two violin sections together onstage right (on the left, from the audience’s viewpoint). A betting person could easily wager that this seating arrangement will reappear each time she takes the podium for mainline orchestral repertoire. Whether that will be the case with other conductors this season remains to be seen.
The next piece on the program was the most interesting, even if not the most memorable composition: the Harp Concerto by the early Soviet-era Russian composer Alexander Mosolov (Алекса́ндр Мосоло́в, 1900 – 1973).
What was memorable was the performance by the featured soloist of the evening, harpist Xavier de Maistre, who was brilliant in technique but even more so in his musicality, unleashing a broad palette of color and expression in this meandering, albeit otherwise attractive, work.
Cover art: Mosolov Harp Concerto CD (Sony)
One could posit that this was a bold piece of programming by Stutzmann for an opening concert, but the reality is more pragmatic: Stutzmann and Maistre recently recorded an album featuring the harp concertos of both Mosolov and one of his teachers, Reinhold Glière (1974 – 1956), with the WDR Sinfonieorchestra on the Sony label (catalog no. 19439913812), released in October 2022. But again, Mosolov’s concerto is not all that memorable, especially versus Tchaikovsky’s, with whom one might wager Glière’s concerto, to which Mosolov wrote his own as a musical response, to be the more natural fit.
However, this is not the only recording of Mosolov’s Harp Concerto: the premiere recording was by harpist Taylor AnnFleshman with conductor Arthur Arnold and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, paired with the composer’s Symphony No. 5, on a disc released by Naxos (catalog no. 8.574102) in December 2020.
Alexander Mosolov was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 1900, when it was part of the Russian Empire (but would be absorbed into the Soviet Union following the Russian Revolution). He moved with his family to Moscow in 1904. Tragically, his father passed away when he was just five years old.
After her husband’s death, Alexander’s mother, Nina Alexandrovna, a professional singer at the Bolshoi Theater, married painter and teacher Mikhail Leblan. They fostered a cosmopolitan environment for young Alexander, who grew up speaking French, German, and Russian and traveled to cultural capitals like Paris, Berlin, and London.
In 1917, Mosolov began working in the office of the People’s Commissioner for State Control, where he had the extraordinary personal opportunity to deliver mail to Vladimir Lenin on three occasions. This experience had a profound impact on him. He volunteered in the Red Army’s First Cavalry Regiment during the Bolshevik Revolution, fighting on the Polish and Ukrainian fronts. (Something to ponder, given the current war in Ukraine.) This wartime experience left him with post-traumatic stress disorder, leading to his medical discharge in July 1921.
Alexander Mosolov, ca. late 1920s (courtesy of ASO)
Afterward, Mosolov enrolled at the Moscow Conservatory, studying composition under Reinhold Glière and Nikolai Myaskovsky. He graduated in 1925 and joined the Association for Contemporary Music.
Mosolov’s fame peaked in 1926 with the composition of Iron Foundry, which gained recognition in the Soviet Union and worldwide.
But as “socialist realism” became the official aesthetic in the Soviet Union in 1932, Mosolov’s style clashed with the new political norms. In response, he journeyed to Central Asia to research and collect folk songs, which led to his creation of the first symphonic suite based on a Turkmen folk song. Soviet authorities criticized his folk song settings for their deviation from “socialist realism” stylistic requirements.
In a desperate plea for support, Mosolov wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin in 1932, seeking assistance defending his work. Nevertheless, his conflicts with Soviet authorities escalated, resulting in his expulsion from the Composers’ Union in 1936 and imprisonment in the Gulag in 1937. He was arrested on charges of alleged counter-revolutionary activities but was released after serving eight months due to advocacy from his former teachers, Glière and Myaskovsky.
Harpist Xavier de Maistre performs Mosolov’s “Harp Concerto” with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. (credit: Raftermen)
In 1938, Mosolov’s sentence was commuted to a five-year exile, restricting him from residing in Moscow, Leningrad, or Kyiv until 1942.
Following his early release, Mosolov shifted his focus, and his later compositions aligned more with the Soviet aesthetic, though he never reclaimed the success of his earlier career. He continued to live in Moscow and compose until his passing in 1973.
For an encore, Maistre treated the audience to Carnaval de Venice, Op. 184, by the 19th-century Belgian harpist-composer Dieudonné-Félix Godefroid (1818 – 1897), one of the most outstanding harpists of his day.
Although perhaps unfamiliar to most classical audiences, Godefroid and his compositions are well-known among the harp community. Based on the Neapolitan song, Carnaval de Venice is a brilliant showpiece and effective encore occasionally selected for use in international harp competitions. But it is not just a piece of technical virtuosity. It proved a tremendous vehicle for the expressive capabilities of Maistre, who turns 50 years old later this month.
After intermission, Tchakovsky’s Symphony No. 4 started and ended well, with the orchestra’s strongest performance in the first and fourth movements.
Despite the composer’s description of the symphony’s opening fanfare (“Andante sostenuto”) as a metaphor for “Fate” (heard first in the horns and bassoons, then trumpets and upper woodwinds), a symphony’s purely musical qualities are what matter; here, the first movement’s towering structure serves as a prime exemplar, and the return of this fanfare in the fourth movement is just one unifying element, serving as a marker between each section of the sonata-allegro form.
That said, it is also worth noting that this recurring fanfare, with its triplet 16ths figure, exhibits a close rhythmic kinship to the opening trumpet fanfare of the Polonaise from Eugene Onegin. (Compare with the condensed excerpt below from the opening of the Fourth Symphony with the earlier illustrated excerpt above from the Polonaise.)
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 1, mvt. 1, meas. 1 – 6.
The waltzing “Moderato con anima” (et al.) featured some good rubato and phrase-shaping, especially in the violins, bringing out the first movement’s more expressive elements.
A simple melancholy melody in the oboe over pizzicato strings gracefully opened the second movement (“Andantino in modo di canzona”). The music’s climax recaptured the passion of the opening movement, but there were a few intonation problems (particularly some moments in the horns), which soured it somewhat.
But these problems were eclipsed by those of the third movement. Way too fast and way too hushed, the pizzicati became blurred in the Symphony Hall acoustics, sounding as if the strings were having a challenging time staying together—a poor calculation by Stutzmann.
The Finale, marked “Allegro con fuoco” at its opening measure, should indeed have fire (“con fuoco”), but not as if it’s your hair that’s on fire. It felt like Stutzmann was forcing the front edge of the tempo a bit much. Otherwise, the Finale was pretty much in good working order. ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Atlanta Symphony Orchestra: aso.org
- Nathalie Stutzmann: nathaliestutzmann.com
- Xavier de Maistre: xavierdemaistre.com
Read more by Mark Gresham.
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