North Carolina Symphony music director Carlos Miguel Prieto. (credit: Benjamin Ealovega)

Prieto, Osorio plumb Brahms’ depth, Rachmaninoff’s Third Symphony takes the spotlight in NC Symphony concert

CONCERT REVIEW:
North Carolina Symphony
October 18(m) & 19, 2024
Meymandi Concert Hall
Raleigh, North Carolina – USA

North Carolina Symphony; Carlos Miguel Prieto, conductor; Jorge Federico Osorio, piano.
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN: Egmont Overture
Johannes BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 1
Sergei RACHMANINOFF: Symphony No. 3

Christopher Hill | 22 OCT 2024

On Saturday, October 19, 2024, the North Carolina Symphony (NCS), under the direction of Carlos Miguel Prieto, performed an ambitious program of Beethoven, Brahms, and Rachmaninoff. Think about it: At what point was it possible for the Russian R to “pal up” with the German Bs and even to become the major work on a program? Fifty years ago, a Rachmaninoff concerto might have been performed with a Brahms symphony, but never the reverse. This is the 21st century, folks. Our ears are (hopefully) more open.

The Beethoven opener was the Egmont Overture. In a pre-concert talk, Mr. Prieto shared his knowledge about the context in which, in June 1810, Beethoven premiered his overture and incidental music for the Viennese production of a Goethe play. In the event, the overture was performed with appropriate gravitas. The sarabande motto was voiced robustly and sternly by the strings. The performance made the most of Beethoven’s “middle period” style, with lengthy, well-calculated crescendos, and, at the end, it allowed for a theatrical conclusion.


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There followed the Big Work in the program’s first half, Brahms’ youthful but exceedingly mature Piano Concerto 1. The soloist was a Mexican colleague of Prieto’s, Jorge Federico Osorio, with whom he has collaborated many times over the decades. In a December 2023 review of the most recent recording by Mr. Osario and Maestro Prieto, a critic for Fanfare wrote that “the command Osorio has of the keyboard is remarkable,” and the same could be said of his performance of the Brahms. Six decades ago, your reviewer heard criticisms of a then-well-known pianist by well-known musicians over his inability to perform trills to perfection. Mr. Osario, on the contrary, performs trills to perfection, which makes a big difference in Brahms’ Piano Concerto 1. But I don’t mean to suggest that Mr. Osorio’s performance was simply more than satisfactory from a technical perspective. Far from it. He has been playing this concerto for many years, and from the evidence of this performance, he is still finding new epiphanies in it. His was a highly personal and authentic performance.

Despite Mr. Osario’s long relationship with Carlos Prieto, it was clear from the start of the first movement that the two musicians had different conceptions of the concerto. As you probably know, Brahms adopted the Mozartian rather than the Mendelssohnian conception of the form, meaning that Brahms’ work begins with a long, stormy, and purely orchestral exposition. Maestro Prieto rendered this opening dramatically and effectively, but not granitically, not in the fashion of Klemperer or the pianist Claudio Arrau. In Raleigh, Mr. Osario, the pianist, begged to differ, and from his entrance, the orchestra had to shift gears to match his more deliberate — and arguably more profound — manner. By a third of the way into the 20-something-minute movement, the conductor and soloist found common ground, and the rest of the long concerto was remarkably well-attuned.

Jorge Federico Osorio (credit: Todd Rosenberg)

Jorge Federico Osorio (credit: Todd Rosenberg)

In all three movements, Mr. Osario was searching in his exploration of Brahms’s piano part without any suggestion that he didn’t have the “chops” to perform the work at, if he wished, breakneck speed. At the dramatic beginning of the first movement’s recapitulation he was perhaps less explosive in his octave work than one would hope for. In other passages, particularly in the coda, his octave work was indeed exciting. Elsewhere, his passagework was always excellent, sensitively sculpted, and fluent. Overall, his recreation of the score fell squarely in the zone of Gilels, Arrau, and Grimaud rather than that of Fleischer, Serkin, or Pollini.

The second half of the program belonged to Rachmaninoff. Rachmaninoff didn’t write many symphonies — five, if you include his choral symphony, The Bells, and the Symphonic Dances — but from his very first symphony, he saw the genre as a medium in which a composer could and should address his highest aspirations and thereby show his true mettle — or lack of it. In its time, that first symphony was an aggressively bold, ambitious, and modern work unlike anything else in the Russian repertoire, and when it came a cropper, critically, the composer felt deeply wounded. This is worth mentioning because, in this reviewer’s opinion, Rachmaninoff’s Third Symphony aspires to be every bit as bold, ambitious, and modern as his first.


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Of course, by 1935, when Rachmaninoff began writing his Third Symphony, the term “modern” had already embraced works by Varese, Ives, Bartok, and the Second Viennese School. However, it also embraced neoclassical works by Stravinsky and Prokofiev as well as works by Poulenc, Gershwin, and Arnold Bax. (I mention Bax because after Rachmaninoff heard that composer’s Third Symphony, the Russian is said to have called Bax the greatest living composer.) In other words, there were several ways to write “modern” music in the 1930s, and Rachmaninoff wanted to be part of it without, of course, losing his personal voice. One result was the Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. A more forceful and determined result was the Third Symphony. In it, Rachmaninoff reinvents his musical vocabulary. He’s still writing tonal music, but it now incorporates, almost continuously, slippery, unexpected chromaticisms. It also incorporates, almost continuously, prosodic rhythms that reflect speech rather than dance.

As it happens, we have Rachmaninoff’s own 1939 recording of the symphony, a studio performance made for 78-rpm playback. This means the final recording was assembled from short takes. It also means that in the longest movement, the first, Rachmaninoff keeps the tempo lively and skips the exposition repeat, thereby saving a shellac disc. Maestro Prieto did the same thing on October 19, and as a result, the timing of his performance differed from the composer’s own by only a few seconds.

Although it is early in Maestro Prieto’s tenure with the North Carolina Symphony, his experience and keen ear are already having an effect on the orchestra’s sound. Balances are superb. The woodwinds, in particular, can be heard with perfect clarity, and because Rachmaninoff writes contrapuntally as well as sonorously, this reveals both sinew and beauty in his instrumental textures. The trombones, tuba, and the horns play with a burnished ensemble, and the trumpets blend in beautifully, too, though at certain climactic moments perhaps with a tad too much restraint. Rachmaninoff’s lush string sound subdivides the ensemble, which requires both technical ability and discipline to produce the sculpted sound the composer intended. The NCS strings rose to the occasion, sounding much like the Philadelphia string section to which generations of orchestras have aspired. In the second subject of the first movement, the Big Tune, the cellos sounded a bit undernourished, and indeed, they need a couple more chairs to match the violins in ensemble size. That said, what your reviewer heard was a sound that would leave any orchestra in the world content and even proud.


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The highlight of the Rachmaninoff symphony performance came with its last movement, and this was due not only to the orchestra’s virtuosity but also to Prieto’s conception of the movement. Your reviewer knows three live performances and seven recorded performances of this work, and he has never heard the last movement played so compellingly as it was by the NCS under Prieto. For Rachmaninoff, the sonata form (used in the last movement) was not an old bottle into which he poured new wine. He was more of a glass blower than that. So late in the development, he introduces (a la Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony) a “Turkish March,” one with Oriental inflections. As soon as this episode began, it was clear that Prieto had taken especial care in the perfection of its balances. The musical importance of this episode lies later in the movement’s coda, where the march returns and eventually leads to the symphony’s life-affirming conclusion. The entire movement was handled superbly, but it was Prieto’s coda that unexpectedly stunned me. For this reviewer, he owns the last movement of Rachmaninoff’s Third Symphony. Under his direction, there isn’t an unnecessary measure or even gesture. It’s the reference performance I shall always remember.

The audience response to this performance was polite. The concert “encore,” a tribute to a deceased benefactor of the orchestra, was a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise in an arrangement that assigns the soprano part to a solo violin. This brief, earlier, pre-chromatic Rachmaninoff received a standing ovation.

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About the author:
Christopher Hill has performed, in concert, as soloist, accompanist, and band member, classical, jazz, blues, and rock music on various keyboards and stringed instruments. He obtained a degree in musicology and has written about music, music theory, and music history for over five decades. He currently lives in Durham, North Carolina, from whence he travels to concerts throughout the Southland.

Read more by Christopher Hill.
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