The Shed concert began with a tribute to Andris Nelsons, as the players marched onto the stage together wearing the red flowers that have come to symbolize resistance to management’s deeply unpopular dictat. But the playing, and marvelous rapport among the players, the audience and Nelsons demonstrated how all could put aside the cauldron of intrigue being reported by media these days…if only for one night or weekend.
Last Saturday evening, the Boston Symphony offered two works that have long been among the most popular scores from Tchaikovsky’s output, yet they encountered resistance at first—his Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, and selected scenes from his first ballet, Swan Lake. Both were regarded, in different ways, as utter failures at the beginning, though both are now among Tchaikovsky’s most honored.
The concerto opens with the brilliant cascade of full-fisted chords that turned into a soaring theme that he developed for four minutes and then drops. Even without the powerful effect of that opening, the first listener, for whom Tchaikovsky intended the piece as a gift, was not moved; Nikolai Rubinstein felt that the concerto would be unplayable without extensive rewriting. Tchaikovsky refused to change anything in the piece. Instead, he offered it to Hans von Bülow, asking only that he play far from Russia, so that if the piece failed, he would not have to listen to the failure. So the premier famously took place in far-away Boston, a place he never visited. In 1875, within the Boston Music Hall Benjamin Johnson Lang led the hired orchestra and von Bülow first intoned those instantly recognizable opening chords.
And Saturday’s performance by the Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, whose coloristic treatment of the opening made exciting power of the first figures, followed by the fleet figures of Ukrainian melodies and a cheerful French song that begins with the two notes, D-A flat, symbolizing the Belgian singer Desirée Artôt, the only woman for whom Tchaikovsky ever conceived a real passion, all played serious central movements in the concerto. The directness of the themes, their interplay of mood and color, brings the energy of the concerto to a high level of satisfactory resolve.
Nelsons’s exemplary partnership with his soloist and as a dance accompanist led to memorable outings in striking passages: in the concerto, with the first bold assertion of the brilliant assertion of a heroic mode, or later, with cheerful French folksong and Ukrainian melody. He makes the ballet score still more varied, with thematic colors, thematic motifs representing the personages of the court, and the host of swans, including the baleful black swan Odile and the white swan, Odette, who has been ensorceled by the magician Rotbart. All of the characters play their their parts, rather like the characters in a Wagnerian role.
This Saturday concert included a tribute to the Boston Ballet and the 25th anniversary of the appointment of its current artistic director, Mikki Nissinen, whose mounting of his choreography of the pas de deux was included as a beautiful dance scene featuring Viktorina Kapitonova as Odette and Patrick Yocum as the prince. The combined presence of the dancers in the most famous portion of the score offered a tribute from one company to the other. We were lucky to have large video screens to witness their efforts.
Today, of course, the work is one of the most and esteemed of Tchaikovsky’s works. But unlike the concerto, the early resistance represented more particularly the failure of the prima donna rather than the public’s or the critics’ indifference or antipathy. In any case, both performances on Saturday evening drew extensive cheers in praise of all participants. Andris Nelsons, the Boston Symphony, Seong-Jin Cho, Mikki Nissinen, Viktorina Kapitonova, and Patrick Yocum accepted the fullest and most enthusiastic cheers.