TCHAIKOVSKY: The Music for Piano and Orchestra = Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, Op. 23; Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Major, Op. 44; Piano Concerto No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 75; Concert-Fantasy in G Major, Op. 56 – Jerome Lowenthal, piano/London Symphony Orchestra/Sergiu Comissiona
Bridge 9301A/B, 2-CD 68:48; 57:54 [Distr. by Albany] ****:
In a conversation with Dr. Anna Lou Dehavenon, widow of the great American piano virtuoso William Kapell, she named Jerome Lowenthal (b. 1932) as a natural successor to Kapell’s immense Romantic repertory and style of performance. The set of Tchaikovsky opera with piano and orchestra dates from sessions held at Abbey Road Studio #1 on 5-6 April 1987 and 31 May and 1 June 1989, Lowenthal’s playing on the Hamburg Steinway. Conductor Sergiu Comissiona (1928-2005) was particularly well regarded as a master colorist, a direct descendant of the school of Constantin Silvestri.
The ubiquitous First Concerto projects a breezy craftsmanship, solid, even massive in the large episodes, intimate and lyrically rhetorical in the subdued passages. Intertwining of keyboard and strings and French horn, the graduated crescendi, all contribute to a dramatic inevitability of forces, alternately cascading and thundering to a powerful caesura for the grand cadenza. Lowenthal imbues the various runs, the intricate scale patterns and carillon effects with an elegant patina, to which the orchestral tutti adds balletic frills that rise to the coda’s elastic peroration in glorious Technicolor. The chansonette that claims we must amuse ourselves, dance and laugh–the folk basis of the second movement–exploit’s the bell tones of the keyboard, Lowenthal in elegant conversation with the LSO woodwinds and cello. Yet Lowenthal illustrates the Concerto’s frequent indulgence of bravura display as well, its skittish dance figures and flippant roulades. The acrobatic Allegro con fuoco finale again indulges us with no end of balletic figures that accompany the keyboard tissue, especially in this, the original version of the score (1875). Fluid, lovingly embellished, the performance moves with a controlled vehemence that quite rivals the more “exalted” versions from Richter, Gilels, and Horowitz. A labor of love on all counts.
The Concert Fantasy in G (1884) opens with a dark chord from Francesca da Rimini but then proceeds in a different more flippantly martial direction that resembles a dumka. The use of bells creates an elusive, fairy-tale atmosphere, the piano rendering a parlando motif that the orchestra likes and embellishes. Lowenthal can indulge his poetic faculties to great length in the elongated cadenza of the first movement, especially as Tchaikovsky seems intent on separating his forces, the orchestral tissue kept silent while Tchaikovsky exploits a fioritura suitable even to Liszt. The orchestra returns with a Russian dance easily attributable to one of his suites or ballet scenes, especially in the flute solo. The piano ornaments the ensuing colors, but its role seems strictly obbligato, almost reminiscent of Litolff. The second movement, entitled Contrasts: Andante cantabile, opens with the piano-as-balalaika in strummed chords then accompanied by a solo cello. That we might envision Balanchine choreographing this moment seems as natural as breathing. The treatment in horns and strings parallels the second movement of the Fifth Symphony. A raucous Russian dance emerges out of the more romantic mix, a festive and flamboyant affair that well points to the circus antics in Shostakovich. The later brass parts echo, ever so slightly, elements from the Manfred Symphony, Op. 58. Tchaikovsky added a brilliant coda to be appended to the first movement recapitulation, should this movement be played alone: Lowenthal and Comissiona include the four-and-one-half minute sequence for our delectation.
Lowenthal performs the original 1880 version of the G Major Concerto, whose massive cadenza in the first movement appears prior to the recapitulation. The G Major enjoys a buoyancy and optimistic militancy quite its own, aggressive and resolute. The expansive lyric elements often evince a flair we find in the Fourth Concerto in D Minor by Tchaikovsky’s contemporary, Anton Rubinstein. The first movement evolves as a kind of extended dialogue in repeated riffs, since Tchaikovsky again separates his major forces. The colloquies with the solo flute prove endearing. Lowenthal often demonstrates the clarity of his line and the sustained elegance of his trill; even his octaves enjoy a suave power that does not smear in rapid passages. The bassoon work in the large tutti before the cadenza captivates, and the extended solo luxuriates in crisp articulate fioritura. Only after the brilliant filigree halts does the formal Herculean recapitulation begin, in the manner of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto.
The slow movement Andante non troppo features Michael Davis, violin and Douglas Cummings, cello in something like a balletic form of the composer’s own Trio in A Minor by way of Sleeping Beauty. At first, the violin reigns; then with the cello entry we are not too distant from the Brahms Double Concerto. Piano and flute again engage in aerial gymnastics, the melody a series of soaring gestures. The last movement, a vibrant Russian dance, explodes onto the scene, the horns punctuated and the obligatory counterpoint never far away, lest we forget Tchaikovsky’s “German” leanings.
The so-called Third Concerto in E-flat (1892) began as a symphony, then converted to a one-movement fantasia (Allegro brillante) with piano obbligato. Comissiona has ample opportunity to strut his majestic stuff, which says quite a bit about the LSO capacity for knotty metrics. The filigree of the Russian dance may have something of Saint-Saens about it. A veritable whirlwind of an orchestral climax yields to the lengthy convoluted cadenza, a virtuoso showpiece that subsumes what passes for a development section. The splendidly symphonic last four minutes quite convinces us that Tchaikovsky’s powers had not waned, and that if we could have boiled the water in that fatal glass in 1893, we would have preserved a still virile talent.
–Gary Lemco
