Two Russian Classics

nso review: Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” Symphony & the Rach 3 conducted by Stanislav Kochanovsky at the kennedy center, featuring soloist stephen hough.

The pleasures and perils of Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” Symphony were brought resoundingly home Thursday night at the National Symphony Orchestra’s all-Russian program. The work captivates, manipulates, and bamboozles audiences today just as it did at its premiere in 1893; the viscerally-powerful third movement perfectly fits the bill of a thunderous symphonic finale, and, notwithstanding printed movements in the program, audiences ever since have burst into applause at its conclusion, thinking the concert is over. Guest conductor Stanislav Kochanovsky did his best to ward off this interruption, hurtling into the actual finale almost before the last chord of the third movement had cleared, but to no avail; the applause drowned out one of the most dramatic “scene-changes” in all the entire symphonic canon. 

 Much has been made over the centuries about Beethoven’s “ground-breaking” innovations in the genre, but taken as a whole, the “Pathétique” remains one of the most startling acts of originality in history. Beginning with something as mundane as the key; none of the past masters (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bruckner) ever thought to write a symphony in B minor (Schubert started one, his famous No. 8, “Unfinished” – did the strange tonality have something to do with his dissatisfaction?). Tchaikovsky’s only possible model was an earlier B minor symphony by Alexander Borodin, his inferior in every respect. But there was no predecessor for the idea of a large-scale symphony ending with a slow movement in tenebrous gloom. Virtually every previous minor-key symphony either ended in the major mode or at least in bold declamation (Mozart No. 40, Brahms No. 4). The “Pathétique” does neither; the finale’s ending is, if anything, even more anguished than the stygian opening of the first movement, itself a unique bit of orchestration with the double-basses playing divisi harmonies. Throw in an entire movement set in 5/4 time, an expanded vocabulary of dynamics (the bassoon at one point being directed to play “pppppp”), and the use, for the first time ever, of a large gong, and you have a feat of creative freshness that rivals anything in music history.       

And while it’s facile to see a connection between the surging passion and grim fatalism with Tchaikovsky’s death nine days after the premiere, the fact is that the composer’s death was sudden and he was only 53, feted and successful, and in good health and spirits while writing the piece. The emotional landscape sprang entirely from his pyretic imagination, and I’m convinced that the “Pathétique” symphony would be his crowning masterpiece in the form even if he’d lived to write four more. 

So how was the concert? Well, pretty good. This is music the players know well (many excerpts from it show up on audition lists), and the NSO woodwinds did especially fine jobs with their many solos. The basses were perfectly in tune for the treacherous opening, and the strings tore into the ferocious passagework later on with impressive power. The gentle pathos of the second movement (marked “flebile” or “sorrowful”) was understated and thus more effective. Kochanovsky, in his early 40s, is a seasoned conductor of opera and symphonic works and makes his U.S. debut here with us. His leadership is natural and elegant, and he sometimes drew some downy-soft textures from the NSO strings. In the big climax of the symphony’s first movement, he kneaded the pulse, pushing and pulling as the trombones traded angry appoggiaturas with the rest of the orchestra. Very exciting. In general, I’d would say that Kochanovsky was more concerned with the musical line than with precision (some group entrances were a bit mushy, and the virtuoso third movement didn’t get off to a great start). He spared the NSO’s excellent principal bassoonist the torture of producing that famous “pppppp” passage by giving the notes to the bass clarinet (an old conductor’s trick, and one I dislike), and, like almost everyone else who stands on that podium, he allowed the brass, most particularly the horns, to swamp the textures continually. It is a crime how much music NSO audiences don’t hear because of improper balances; and at one point the horns even raised up their bells a la Mahler. Jesus Christ! Like they’re not loud enough already.          

The NSO program could be described as ribeye steak and lobster; no appetizer, just the symphony and the Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 3 on the first half. The soloist, British polymath Stephen Hough (composer, author, MacArthur Fellowship winner), was something of a cipher. His fingers were well-nigh infallible in this brutally-taxing work, sailing through thickets, cascades, and torrents of notes without turning a hair. He paced himself carefully, gliding over the first little cadenza without chewing the scenery as so many other pianists have (in the big main cadenza he played the ”lighter” version as well). He danced gracefully through the impish waltz section of the Intermezzo and found little nooks and crannies of humor in the scowling pages elsewhere. The only time he sounded taxed was in the horse-trot passage of the Finale, where he sort of pounded on each beat without any longer phrasing. But in general, I found his sprightly playing miscast for this brooding piece. One can only tip the hat to his control of the instrument, but we’re used to darker sounds and darker moods. Kochanovsky accompanied closely (Hough threw him no curveballs), and crafted a lovely, yearning opening for the Intermezzo, but let the orchestra run roughshod over Hough in the coda of the Finale; who knows what he was even trying to play.  

Whatever my reservations, the capacity audience was enthralled, bringing Hough back repeatedly until he gave us a Chopin Nocturne (Op. 9 No. 2), the rubato a little cloying, but the tone luminous.

The program was repeated Friday morning and will be tonight at 8:00 in the Kennedy Center, but I hear it’s pretty much sold out. 

Pictured above: (L to R) Stanislav Kochanovsky, Stephen Hough