The Elite Mariinsky (Don’t-Call-It-Kirov) Orchestra
A sold-out house greeted the most powerful conductor in Russia, Valery Gergiev, with his elite Mariinsky Orchestra from St. Petersburg, a group he has led for 30 years.
Several things stood out right away: This is a crack orchestra, with a younger ensemble than expected (only a few gray hairs showing). Unlike so many of our orchestras, they don’t tootle on stage beforehand; they enter together, tune up, and play. And the group had 22 women on stage Oct. 22, a representation better than many a Western-European orchestra. All but forgotten were the old Communist days (pre-1990), when it was named Kirov, and emigre composers like Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff were usually taboo on concert programs. To make the point, the 65 year old Gergiev focused on those two very composers for the pair of concerts at Davies Hall.
I got there on Monday, where he led a superb, soulful, spaced-out interpretation of Debussy’s sensual, piquant “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.” The flute solo by a young woman (subbing for the principal) was to die for. Gergiev also drew a distinct line connecting Debussy to Stravinsky’s music of a decade later, foreshadowing modernism. The work had an aura, and sounded very Gallic.
What is quirky about Gergiev is his enigmatic baton style, with the baton often trembling through the most sublime passages, a deviant which does not faze his well-disciplined players. Gergiev gets great results. In his life he is no every-day conformist either. Of the many hundreds of interviews I’ve done with artists, Gergiev in his S.F. Apartment years ago was the only one ever to do an interview barefoot, with feet twitching. It was as if his feet, like so many in music, were yearning for ever greater freedom.
There followed Rachmaninoff’s “Paganini Variations” Rhapsody, with pianist Denis Matsuev, 43. In baseball, Matsuev would be a home-run slugger—huge, muscular, decisive, percussive. He took on the piano in strong-arm fashion and won, mastering it and showing little mercy. The audience went wild.
He showed however both subtlety and mastery in his soulful encore, an Etude-Tableau by Rachmaninoff.
The second half was Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, which appears to have passed the No. 1 in popularity. Where the First represents the many varied early influences on the composer, the Fifth bristles with passion and emotion.
Mariinsky Orchestra from St. Petersburg, Russia, Valery Gergiev conducting, with pianist Denis Matsuev, Oct. 22, Davies Hall, S.F., under auspices of San Francisco Symphony. SFS info: (415) 864-6000, or go online.
