United States Prokofiev, Brahms: Daniil Trifonov (piano), Cleveland Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst (conductor). Mandel Live performance Corridor at Severance Music Middle, Cleveland, 9.10.2025. (MSJ)
Prokofiev – Symphony No.7 in C-sharp minor, Op.131
Brahms – Piano Concerto No.2 in B-flat main, Op.83
After fleeing Russia’s communist revolution in 1918, Sergei Prokofiev spent a decade and a half within the west, making an attempt alternately to out-Stravinsky Stravinsky and to be the witty and sarcastic unhealthy boy of classical music. Tiring of those roles and discovering little profession traction, he allowed himself to be wooed again to his house nation and resettled there for good.
It was a disastrous mistake. Whereas Prokofiev was in a position at first to put in writing a few of his best items, the poisoned environment of presidency overreaching grew to become palling. After his darkish Sixth Symphony, Prokofiev was certainly one of a variety of composers, together with Shostakovich, introduced up earlier than the bureaucratic Composers Fee on prices of ‘formalism’, decadence and never writing constructive music for the individuals. Every of the composers in that room stood quietly, drowning within the humiliation. All however one, that’s. Solely Prokofiev had the nerve to show his again to the fee and loudly denounce their criticisms of him and his colleagues.
It was a courageous transfer, and it price him, after all: commissions and honors proved scarce after this. However much more dire, the stress crumpled Prokofiev’s well being. He was engaged on a big opera undertaking, Struggle and Peace, however nobody would contact it. One of many solely commissions that got here via was a modest request a number of years later for an orchestral work to be carried out for youngsters. If the commissioners have been anticipating one other Peter and the Wolf, they definitely didn’t get it. About all of the defiance Prokofiev had left in him was the choice to make the brand new work a symphony – a type of kinds denounced within the time period ‘formalism’. Past that, it’s a charming look again at childhood with melancholy grownup eyes.
Franz Welser-Möst captured these layers in his efficiency with the Cleveland Orchestra, the third weekend of his twenty-fourth season with the ensemble. He has made a examine in recent times of the symphonies of Prokofiev, and the composer’s music clicks properly with him. Prokofiev’s poise and restraint clearly attraction to Welser-Möst, and he unfolds the items with out resorting to extremes. The Symphony No.7, particularly, has no clear volume-driven level of climax, nevertheless it most definitely has an emotional one. The primary motion reveals the grownup melancholy most clearly, whereas the three subsequent actions depict youthful playfulness seen at a subdued distance. There are two necessary happenings close to the tip of the work, although, and Welser-Möst nailed them each.
The primary is a non-event. Prokofiev ended the piece quietly, however the powers-that-be strongly urged he revise it to offer an upbeat ending. Defeated, Prokofiev acquiesced, and added an ineffective, unconvincing coda. It’s clear that Prokofiev wished the unique ending, and he tacked on the coda so loosely that conductors with frequent sense might detach the annoying and false coda. Alas, conductors will not be all the time pondering creatures, and the revised ending remains to be generally used right this moment. Happily, Welser-Möst would have none of that, and stopped the piece the place it was meant to finish.
Secondly, there most definitely is a second of emotional disaster close to the tip. Conductors who can’t grasp the superfluousness of the added coda additionally are likely to gloss over the 2 chords within the brass that ship the finale into its closing wind-down, plucked strings slowing just like the ticks of a clock operating out of power, like Prokofiev himself. Welser-Möst centered on these chords in a refined manner, neither taking part in them loudly nor exaggeratedly warping the tempo. However there was nonetheless an depth to the 2 sustained chords that quietly broke the again of the nervously upbeat music, letting it subside into its gracefully quiet however stricken finish. The orchestra was in marvelous voice, and this was a becoming fruits of Welser-Möst’s Prokofiev cycle in Cleveland.
However does a late Prokofiev symphony match properly with Brahms’s grandest concerto? Surprisingly, sure. This live performance’s idea got here full circle within the finale of Brahms’s Piano Concerto No.2, which at occasions was playful and wistful in a manner that resonated with the reminiscence of the Prokofiev. And the partnership right here between the conductor and soloist Daniil Trifonov assured that the Brahms wouldn’t be handled as a loud spectacle. Sure, Brahms deliberately takes up the mantle of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto within the first motion, however Trifonov formed the motion’s cascades as if Brahms have been saying to us, ‘See? I can do the heaven-storming factor like Beethoven however watch the place I alone can take this’. Every time, the pianist turned the magnificent volleys of notes into signposts resulting in extra considerate territory. His tone was burnished and wealthy, with an astonishing accuracy in Brahms’s thorniest thickets of notes.
Within the initially stormy second motion, Trifonov and Welser-Möst acquired previous the gestures to deal with the mysterious passages on the coronary heart of the motion, which led into the breathtaking lyricism of the next sluggish motion. That motion was led by a beautiful cello solo from principal Mark Kosower, twining autumnal glow with narrative form. The music by no means simply sat there indulgently: although ripe with luxurious heat, it was all the time going someplace, Trifonov wrapping it in a transcendent sheen. I heard the nice Maurizio Pollini do that concerto in Cleveland with Christoph von Dohnányi twenty-five years in the past. That efficiency was spectacular, nevertheless it was nowhere close to as transcendent nor anyplace as technically correct as this one. Trifonov is without doubt one of the nice gamers at work right this moment, and it was clear why he’s so extremely regarded.
Trifonov introduced the live performance full circle by taking part in the 20th of Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives as an encore, the music dissolving into elusive magic. Excellent.
Mark Sebastian Jordan
Featured Picture: Franz Welser-Möst conducts Prokofiev © Human Artist Pictures/Yevhen Gulenko/TCO
