Antonín Dvořák: Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 53; Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor. Jan Mráček violin, Semyon Bychkov conductor, Czech Philharmonic. Koerner Corridor, Toronto; December 8, 2024.
So this should be what ‘Stendahl Syndrome’ — the Nineteenth-century writer’s psycho-physical response to the great thing about the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence — appears like. The soundworld of the Czech Philharmonic, led by their present Music Director, Semyon Bychkov, was no much less elegant to me than the Italian masterpiece to the nice Frenchman.
The event was completely arrange, since this was the top of the orchestra’s two-stop North American tour, following Carnegie Corridor, the place they gave three concert events final week. With its heat, vibrant acoustics and intimate scale, the Koerner Corridor offered the best venue. Not solely that, however this was the rounding up of the Czech Phil’s Czech 12 months of music — a practice established because the 1924 centenary of the beginning of Bedřich Smetana, and revisited each decade in years ending in 4, which occurs to mark different necessary milestones of Czech music, akin to Smetana’s dying in 1884, Janáček’s beginning in 1854, and Dvořák’s dying in1904.
The New York Metropolis and Toronto concert events had been accordingly celebrations of all issues Czech and Bohemian (which is the place Mahler matches in, since he was born in Bohemia and solely moved to Vienna in his mid-teens).
Dvořák: Violin Concerto in A minor
The orchestra introduced with all of them three Dvořák concertos (for piano, violin and cello) and paired these with bigger orchestra (and choral) works for the tour. Alas, the pair of Toronto concert events didn’t embrace Yo-Yo Ma within the much-loved cello concerto, nor Janáček’s stupendous Glagolitic Mass. As an alternative of one more Grammy Award winner (Gil Shaham) because the soloist within the Violin Concerto, we heard Jan Mráček, the orchestra’s youthful concertmaster (the night time earlier than, Daniil Trifonov had given a stunning rendition of the lesser-known Piano Concerto).
The efficiency was robust in each respect, however particularly so when it comes to esprit de corps. There was no ego on show, and a few would possibly even have discovered the primary solo bars unduly restrained; but Mráček’s heat, noble tone, whereas naturally mixing with the orchestra, quickly acquired the required aptitude and swagger.
Right here was a reminder, if we would have liked it, that the mercurial shapeshifting first motion is a surprise of fixed self-reinvention. The Adagio ma non troppo was heartbreakingly tender and stylish, with Bychkov virtually actually caressing every word and allotting with the baton to be able to encourage most suppleness. The spirited finale put Czech nationwide colors on full show, evoking the spirit of the composer’s Slavonic Dances.
Loads of smiles had been exchanged between the soloist and his colleagues, and the entire thing felt like a convivial get-together, with Bychkov a loving and caring host, gently facilitating fairly than forcing his visitors. Even the encore had a second of playful camaraderie, as Mráček left the ultimate left-hand pizzicato to the night’s concertmaster, Jiří Vodička.
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor
The second half of the live performance was much more in want of a Stendahl-style Artwork Assault warning. This was Mahler’s Fifth Symphony at its rawest, its most exuberant, its most transcendental, with a kaleidoscopic show of color and feelings, and a way of structure to rival any Italian Renaissance monument.
From the solemn, but larger-than-life trumpet calls, to the chilling management and resistance of the funeral procession within the first motion, to the ferocious urgency and hair-raising eruptions of the second, to the ghostly strings and haunted horn obbligato of the Scherzo, and at last to the triumphant emergence of life from the darkness and dying within the finale, this was an astonishing fusion of virtuosity and perception. Not forgetting that the majority beautiful of musical love letters, the well-known Adagietto.
With Jana Boušková’s elegant harp accompaniment (positioned centre-staged), silky strings, and Bychkov’s balletic delicate palms, this was a type of heart-stoppingly celestial experiences the place time stands nonetheless.
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Michelle Assay is a Marie Curie/UKRI International Fellow on the Universities of Toronto and King’s School London engaged on Ladies and Western Artwork Music in Iran (Womusiran.com). She holds a PhD from the Sorbonne and College of Sheffield and has been a Leverhulme Fellow on the College of Huddersfield. She is the writer of award-winning articles on Russian and Soviet music and on Shakespeare and music, and usually seems in concert events as a pianist. She is an everyday broadcaster for the BBC and contributor to Gramophone, Worldwide Piano, and Bachtrack, together with Ludwig Van.