Scrubbing the strings

Last night Ian, Laurent, and I went to the Kennedy Center to hear the National Symphony Orchestra play an all-Russian concert. Before the concert, we met up with Phil, but, even though I had an extra ticket, we couldn't talk him into moving downstairs and joining us.

The NSO played three pieces, two by Rachmaninoff and one in the middle by Prokofiev. The Rachmaninoff works were both nicely melodic, at times sounding a bit like a motion picture score. The Prokofiev, though, was half an hour of the cellist scrubbing his bow back and forth across the strings.

The evening opened with Three Études-tableaux. These were three of the five études-tableaux that had been orchestrated by Ottorino Respighi from Rachmaninoff's original piano pieces. They chose "March," "The Sea and the Seagulls," and "The Fair."

Alban Gerhardt was the featured cellist for the Prokofiev, Sinfonia concertante for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 125. It seemed like quite a difficult work for the cellist, but the composition itself was not "musical" and not pretty at all. He had to do a lot of sawing on the strings and there was a lot of rather rough chordal pizzicato that I often though might break the strings. It was certainly an athletic work, though, and Gerhardt's shock of straight dark blond hair provided punctuation to his movements. While I was not all that impressed with the work, the audience loved it, giving Gerhardt an immediate standing ovation and three curtain calls.

Gerhardt then played an encore, choosing a composition by Mstislav Rostropovich called "Moderato." That got two curtain calls.

After intermission, we heard Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 44. It was fine, though the ending is rather subdued, so the audience wasn't as enthusiastic at the end as it had been for Gerhardt. There were a couple of very nice solo moments for the concertmistress, especially in the second movement.

One of my little thanksgivings for the evening was that the audience did not applaud between movements.

On the podium last night was Austrian Hans Graf, current music director of the Houston Symphony. He was a decidedly straightforward and non-flamboyant conductor, but he kept the oft-times unruly NSO together and unusually well disciplined.

Graf and Gerhardt both wore these hideous Euro-style black Nehru jackets (although it looked from a distance as though they were collarless) with a black satin placket running down the front. They looked baggy and were not flattering on either man. The concertmistress, who has quite a variety of dresses—some elegant, some unfortunate—chose to wear not a dress, but tight black pants (leather??) with a shiny black blouse that was rather short and gathered at the waist; she looked almost like she was dressed to go horseback riding.

The Mahler Second is coming up soon. I'm looking forward to going to hear it, especially since Iván Fischer will be conducting. Hope it works out....the one concert I wanted to hear in the fall (Elgar Cello Concerto and Saint-Saens Organ Symphony) I didn't get to hear.