Concert plucks listeners' heart strings
From Mozart to Tchaikovsky, new Philharmonic Orchestra excelsCONCERT REVIEW
By William Glackin
Sacramento Bee Critic at Large
September 25, 1998
Weber: Overture to "Der Freischutz"
Mozart: Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5
Julia Bushkova, Violin
Zvonimir Hacko, Conductor
The new Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra gave a Community Center Theater audience a full range of the musical spectrum in terms of both decibels and emotions Friday night, in the first of two concerts under Zvonimir Hacko -- from the quiet delicacies of a Mozart violin concerto to the fate-filled histrionics of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5.
Both clearly pleased the crowd. There were even some cries and whistles at the end of the Tchaikovsky, after Hacko had led an hour-long performance packed with surging melody, dramatic contrasts and ominous hints of a threatening fate in every one of the four movements.
There was a lot to be said for the elegant beauties of the Mozart, however. It wasn't designed to raise cries and whistles; there isn't a virtuosic measure in the whole 20 minutes. But the applause for soloist Julia Bushkova was long and warm, and the smile on her face at the end -- she had played the work with tender care and the utmost seriousness -- hinted that she had enjoyed it too.
Hacko and the orchestra had been with her all the way. The contrast between their approach to this and the brooding excitement of the Tchaikovsky was striking. Hacko set a delicately placed level of sound for the first movement of the concerto, which has some dramatic stops that add a serious tone to the proceedings, and Bushkova added her own intensity to the drama.
This was Mozart's Concerto No. 3 in G, K. 216, generally (and justly) regarded as one of his three greatest. Mozart authority Alfred Einstein cited "a new depth and richness in Mozart's whole language at this point," with a slow movement "that seems to have fallen straight from heaven." There's a kind of dignity in the broad melodic course of this adagio that Bushkova set forth with great delicacy, over very softly accented figures in the orchestra. It's wonderful music.
Although there are no virtuoso technicalities, each of the three movements has a cadenza for the violin near the end. Bushkova's playing of the one in the adagio was as soft as it was beautiful. The final rondo is full of surprises, including something like an 18th century contradanse, and it ends with the neatest trick in the whole concerto -- a phrase that raises quietly to a point where it leaves us hanging in midair, not quite finished what it had to say. It was perfectly executed.
Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 is a very different masterpiece. In Symphony No. 4, he had struggled against a demanding Fate; now, according to one of his notebooks, he was resigned to it. He wrote of "the inscrutable predestination of Providence." Nevertheless, he took the theme that begins the work and that turns up in every one of the movements, and in the finale transformed it into something like triumph by putting it into a major key.
Regardless, Symphony No. 5 makes for good listening. It's a prime example of Tchaikovsky's great gift for melody and orchestration.
Hacko probed its extremes. The Fate theme at the beginning, in low clarinet and strings, was taken very, very slowly -- with pauses. The bassoon took it up just as slowly. Playing with variants of the theme, Tchaikovsky (and Hacko) built to a big climax, with the orchestra playing expressively and well, delivering a smooth decrescendo at the end.
The slow movement begins in darkness and finds a wonderful and perhaps sad melody that was stolen for a pop hit called "Moon Love" in 1939. It's scored for horn and was played affectingly by, presumably, principal Philip Richardson. Turbulence brings back the Fate theme, but the horn returns to lead the movement to another quiet ending.
After a pleasant waltz for a third movement, the finale brings Fate back in a low-register statement by the strings. Darkness descends over a suspenseful roll in the timpani, but out of it comes the transformed theme, now in major, after a dramatic stop. The violins and violas take it up, and it becomes a kind of triumphal march. It's the kind of musical excitement that is nearly irresistible.
The concert, which attracted what looked to be a crowd of somewhat fewer than 1,000, began with Weber's "Freischutz Overture" in a performance that stressed its dramatic contrasts.
There was a lot of good playing in the concert, but in the Tchaikovsky some passages that weren't perfectly coherent, in that the main themes didn't stand out with proper clarity. Still, this was only the orchestra's second performance, its first since Oct. 17. It was to be repeated Saturday night. The next will feature pianist Micha Dichter on April 11.