April 17--You could hardly find greater musical contrasts in Russian symphonic music than in the two works that make up the first program of Semyon Bychkov's two-week spring residency with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Both Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 8 wear their emotions on their sleeves, but there the similarities end. The former composer's music breathes the ripely romantic ethos of Tchaikovsky (whose tradition Rachmaninov inherited); whereas the latter's score, written 26 years later, employs a grittier musical grammar to evoke the strife and suffering of what the Soviets called the Great Patriotic War.
That both works received strong statements at the orchestra's concert Thursday night at Symphony Center spoke as much to the guest performers' strong personal identification with the music as it did to the uncommon brilliance and generosity of response those artists drew from the CSO.
This is a red-letter weekend at Orchestra Hall for devotees of Russian piano artistry, with Evgeny Kissin returning for his annual recital on Sunday afternoon and Daniil Trifonov, the 24-year-old virtuoso who might be considered heir to Kissin's superstar mantle, assuming the solo duties in the Rachmaninov.
Trifonov scored a sensational Chicago debut with the CSO in 2012 (when he made the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto gallop anew), and each subsequent appearance here has confirmed his emergence as one of the biggest and brightest talents among the next generation of pianists.
The Rachmaninov First Concerto may not offer as many opportunities to knock an audience dead as the composer's better-known second and third concertos, but its lush melodies and glittery bravura writing seem made to order for a romantic firebrand such as Trifonov.
From the commanding thunder of his entry, and the idiomatic fluidity with which he and the orchestra conversed throughout the concerto, you knew something special was going on. Coruscating technique Trifonov has in abundance, but there is also an acute musical sensitivity that makes every note speak directly to the listener. His tone was always bright, full, forward and beautiful; he seemed incapable of producing an ugly sound, even when roaring up and down the keyboard at full speed.
Hunched over the keys, Trifonov brought a coiled-spring energy to the outer movements that did not preclude a melting lyricism in the Russian manner. Such was his control, sensitively matched by Bychkov and the orchestra, that no matter how generous his rubato or expansive his phrasing in the middle movement, the long line held firm.
A roaring reception awaited the slightly built young pianist when it was all over. After several ovations and beaming bows to the audience, Trifonov returned to play a solo encore that was a miracle in itself: Debussy's "Reflets dans l'eau" ("Reflections in the Water"), from Book One of "Images." Not for a long while has one heard the music's delicate pastels rendered with such rapt fluidity, so many enticing shades of softness.
Shostakovich poured some of his deepest, most personal music into the openings of certain symphonies, and the half-hour movement that begins the Eighth Symphony, a harrowing wartime masterpiece dating from 1943, is arguably the greatest of these.
Under Bychkov, it emerged as an extended requiem, beginning in elegiac calm and steadily building to climaxes of anguished, if slightly withdrawn intensity. Not for Bychkov the visceral bite of older, Soviet-school conductors: Those gnashing dissonances of brass and percussion were more an uneasy memory of the battlefield than the battlefield itself. Out of this bleak devastation Scott Hostetler's English horn rose like a consoling phoenix.
Returning to a symphony he first conducted here in 2004, the Russian conductor was even more flexible in tempo and phrasing this time around, but no less controlled. The march movements were unrelenting in their rhythmic drive, with the shrieking piccolo and E flat clarinet of the first one giving way to the hair-trigger exchanges of second violins and lower strings in the second one.
Out of the solemn stillness of the Largo movement emerged the finale, whose timorous acceptance was plotted so effectively that no one could possibly mistake this music for anything but a deeply ambiguous vision of hope after darkest tragedy.
Bychkov's leadership, clear and unobtrusive but always firm, drew a powerful performance from the orchestra. There were fine solo contributions as well, including those of piccolo player Jennifer Gunn, clarinetist Stephen Williamson, oboist Eugene Izotov, bassoonist William Buchman, concertmaster Robert Chen and two guest principals -- flutist Mark Sparks from the St. Louis Symphony and hornist Nicole Cash from the San Francisco Symphony.
The program will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.; $33-$220; 312-294-3000, cso.org.
jvonrhein@tribpub.com
