Concert review: Bard Music Festival, "Prokofiev and His World," Program III
ANNANDALE — In order to provide a comprehensive picture of who Sergey Prokofiev was, the Bard Music Festival, in its 19th year of scrutinizing individual composers, is highlighting "Prokofiev and His World," a two-week round of concerts and symposia.
But the BMF with its 11 programs is only part of the July-August Bard Summerscape, which features 31 events including opera, concerts, theater, dance and film. Participating, besides large numbers of performers, are writers and scholars in conferences.
In Saturday night's Program III of music, director Leon Botstein led the American Symphony Orchestra and its 100-plus musicians in an awesome performance of two major works by Prokofiev and separate pieces by four other composers. Like Prokofiev (1891-1953), who bridged the 19th and 20th centuries, his contemporaries also dealt with mysticism.
Such mystic effects marked the beginning of Rimsky-Korsakov's sea-related tone poem "Sadko" as undulating sounds by the strings and a barely audible roll on the timpani created the effect of water in motion. Also enhancing the story were sounds of "chirping" by strings, exploding drama by the brasses and an abrupt stop — followed with diminishing sounds by the violins in "descent to the undersea."
Compared to "Sadko," Scriabin's "Le poeme de l'exstase" reflects the composer's otherworldly ideas of composition whose goal was to inculcate theosophy and promote ascent to a higher level of self through his music. But while his unfulfilled dream of melding music with color (by machine) was absent in this poem of ecstasy, the compositional effects and grandiose nebulism in the engrossing work received inspired interpretation by conductor Botstein and Carl Albach in extensive trumpet solos.
In "Epitaph, to the Memory of Aleksandr Scriabin" by Joseph Achron, the orchestra captured the solemnity of the piece with "drone" effects (bassoon and trombone) at the beginning, "shimmering" (strings), elegy (trombone and tuba) and "hymn" before closing with tutti sforzando and affirmation.
At the hands of Blair McMillen, Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat major received a captivating performance with his use of facile technique and expressive power in the opening allegro brioso. And while for the following andante assai his playing was reflective in the gracious passages, his artistic talent flourished in the expansive and challenging cadenza of the concluding allegro scherzando. In an otherwise splendid performance, overly dynamic playing by the orchestra obscured the pianist's own grandiose playing in the closing moments of the finale.
After intermission, the ethereal vision of "The Enchanted Lake" by Anatoly Lyadov was fully realized by the orchestra's delicate handing — including a distant-sounding timpani roll, soft tremolos by strings, meandering passages by clarinet, rolling arpeggios by the violins and a fading timpani roll at the end.
Last on the program was Prokofiev's Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 44, whose performance by the orchestra was capped by engrossing sounds. And finally, as a first-rate enterprise with far-reaching implications, the Bard Music Festival serves not only music but also the Hudson Valley as a valuable landmark.