2024-02-13 12:49:27
The day after the historic signing of the contract with the Czech Philharmonic, the British conductor Sir Simon Rattle, crowned with royal titles, introduced himself to the Prague audience. In the first half of Thursday’s concert, he was accompanied by the Chinese pianist Yuja Wang, whom a German magazine dubbed the “Rihanna of the piano”.
The 36-year-old artist won her first Grammy award last Sunday for her album The American Project with music by Michael Tilson Thomas and Teddy Abrams. If he adds two more statuettes to them in time, he will have them just like Sir Rattle.
Starting next season, the chief guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic gave his nod to the offer for many reasons, including because he “loved the warmth and typical dark humor” of the orchestra. He said he immediately felt contact with the players and decided that “this is really worth it”.
In it, the Czech Philharmonic gains a rare collaborator who will attract other musicians and listeners to Prague. The long-time chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic also has extensive experience in continuous work with orchestras, where the goal is not to perform one evening, but to build a broader concept. Including expanding the repertoire. Rattle wants to include more contemporary authors and compositions by Joseph Haydn, Robert Schumann, Edward Elgar and French composers.
In the light of this event, the subscription concert with the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff and Anton Bruckner, which is being repeated in Prague’s Rudolfinum this Friday evening and again on Saturday afternoon, took on an even more festive tone. It was a gourmet taste of what awaits us with Rattle in the next five years.
A string of pearls
Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto from 1909 is notorious among pianists for its difficulty. It is not only a matter of technical difficulty, but also of physical endurance, the interpretation takes around forty minutes. The winged criticism of the author’s enemies is: “Too many notes.” Between 29 and 30 thousand of them appear in various versions of the solo part of the third concerto – yes, someone counted them.
Pianist Yuja Wang has the stamina of an athlete. | Photo: Petra Hajská
Yuja Wang played them all with grace, brilliance and emotionality. Where other pianists might slide into weighted pathos, she shaped each note judiciously and delivered it poetically toward the concentrated audience. At some moments one was literally breathless – although such a connection is overused when writing about music, sometimes it really happens.
However, rare and beautiful moments alternated with unclear passages regarding the dialogue between the orchestra and the extraordinary soloist. Sir Rattle sometimes got too far behind the Philharmonic, and the accompanying figures faded into obscurity. The result was a disjointed string of musical pearls.
It is clear that the decision to play shyly, almost inaudibly, in some moments stems from experience. A soloist in such a demanding concert sometimes needs “help” to make their art stand out. Yuja Wang did not require this sympathetic but overly cautious support. Even in lyrical passages, she created a supporting, expressive tone.
In addition, she has the endurance of an athletic athlete, which she proved with an absolutely superhuman performance when she played all four of Rachmaninov’s piano concertos and his Variations on a Theme of Paganini in one evening in New York last year. The New York Times ranked this performance among the musical events of the year.
There is another fascinating thing about Yuje Wang besides his great talent. Since 2007, when she appeared behind Martha Argerich in Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and launched a stellar career, she remains natural, unpretentious and honest in her speech and interviews. In one video, she can be seen playing a theme from the Rachmaninoff Variations in depth. Then an amused smile appears on her face, and without interrupting the game, she says to the camera: “You know what the best motivation is? When men act like jerks.”
The specific relationship to Rachmaninoff can also be seen on her active Instagram account. In one photo, in which she’s wearing a black crop top, she informs fans that months of Rachmaninoff exercises have given her “pretty good abs.”
Abs and high culture, do they go together? For many years, Yuja Wang provoked conservative critics with her relaxed behavior and wardrobe. Over time, however, the awkward comments about her too short and tight clothing disappeared. The pianist brought fashion and a bit of “glamour” to the concert halls. She’s the Rihanna of the piano, after all.
Yuja Wang performs Rachmaninov’s Third Concerto accompanied by the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gustave Dudamel. Photo: Petra Hajská | Video: Deutsche Grammophon
An exceptional vision
Anton Bruckner deviates a bit from the usual ideas about romantic composers. He begged the hand of teenage girls generations younger than him and bordered on fanaticism in his faith. His life was seemingly without major dramas, and so he remained a sideline of interest to most writers and filmmakers, with the honorable exception of the wonderful Ken Russell, director of Lisztomania.
The fact that he dedicated the Sixth Symphony in 1881 to his housemate also testifies to Bruckner’s wonderful nature. In the history of dedications, this is one of the more curious ones.
However, we can put the Austrian composer in at least one fixed box, the one called “unrecognized genius”. He faced vicious criticism and devastating doubts about his own talent. Some of his nine symphonies thus exist in numerous and diverse versions, which have puzzled more than one musicologist.
Nevertheless, the sixth was composed in a relatively self-confident period and Bruckner did not revise it later. It is full of warm and wistful melodies, with a mostly optimistic tone and humorous episodes in the scherzo, during which Thursday’s performance the horns of the Czech Philharmonic excelled.
The focus of the one-hour composition is the slow second movement, which, according to conductor Simone Young, has “radiance, depth, passion and tragedy”. For Sir Simon Rattle, however, it is also important to perceive the overall architecture, as he ranks Bruckner among composers with “exceptional vision”.
We can also speak of an extraordinary vision in the case of Rattle himself, an unusually affable man who became widely known in the 1980s as music director of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He worked consistently on Bruckner’s symphonies both in England and later with the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra.
He was now driving the sixth in Prague by heart. Even from a distance, it was clear how intimately he knows the score. Its nooks and crannies, potential, challenges related to a complex form and places insidious to rhythmic and above all dynamic interplay.
Sir Simon Rattle will become the chief guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic from next season. He signed a contract for five years. | Photo: Petra Hajská
The Czech Philharmonic played the piece after twenty years. Yet she seemed to have a similar intimate and passionate relationship with him as Rattle. The sound balance between the individual groups, the building of phrases in the strings, high concentration, a wonderful feeling of Bruckner’s characteristic pauses. The Rudolfinum, filled to the brim, was lucky enough to hear all of this.
If Sir Simon Rattle and the Czech Philharmonic can achieve such a result in a one-off concert, we really have something to look forward to in the coming years of his regular hosting.