Canada Various: Nicholas Wright (violin), Vancouver Symphony Orchestra / Han-Na Chang (conductor). Orpheum Theatre, Vancouver, 3.3. 2023. (GN)
Victoria Borisova-Ollas – ‘…and time is running past midnight…(2014)’
Prokofiev – Violin Concerto No.1 in D main, Op.19
Beethoven – Symphony No.7 in A serious, Op.92
Korean conductor Han-Na Chang has been on the radar for no less than twenty years now. Her story is well-known, beginning as an distinctive cellist from her childhood – taught by Mischa Maisky and Mstislav Rostropovich – she recorded eight widely-praised CDs for EMI from her late teenagers onward, collaborating with the likes of Sinopoli, Rostropovich and Pappano. She was deemed a ‘classical superstar of tomorrow’ by Gramophone in 2006. But the cellist was not glad. She wished to be a conductor and to share extra utterly within the ardour of music-making – and to convey that zeal to the younger.
Chang made her conducting debut in South Korea in 2007, graduating to the London orchestras by 2012, and made her BBC Proms debut two years later with the Qatar Philharmonic. Named Principal Guest Conductor of the Trondheim Symfoniorkester in Norway in 2013-14, she assumed the place of Chief Conductor in 2017, the place she continues right this moment. As was evident on the present Vancouver Symphony Orchestra live performance, highlighted by Beethoven’s Symphony No.7, Han-Na Chang has matured right into a conductor who displays the strongest orchestral management and has outstanding power and dedication.
All Chang’s skills had been on show proper from the outset, with a superbly-negotiated rendering of ‘…and time is running past midnight…(2014)’ by Swedish/Russian composer Victoria Borisova-Ollas. There is nice depth to her music and her prize-winning Wings of the Wind (1997) and Symphony No.1 ‘The Triumph of Heaven’ (2001) have been recorded on Phono Suecia with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra below Mats Rondin. The present rating derives from her opera Dracula, and it inhabits the identical gripping emotional world. It was instructed to the conductor by her orchestra. While the composer goals to convey ‘time … running rapidly towards an unknown future’, in some ways the piece additionally conveys the concept, whereas metrical time could also be fixed, perceived time varies with the emotional state. The latter can velocity up or stand nonetheless, relying on circumstance – and this alternation appears to be one key to the work’s growth.
Given the title, one isn’t stunned by an allusion to the well-known tick-tock passage in Prokofiev’s Cinderella, imaginatively put forth by jangling percussion in the beginning. The work rapidly builds to frenzied passages for full orchestra with stabbing ascending glissandos on the strings, and insistent punctuating brass, solely to die down briefly to quieter percussion interludes earlier than the passionate power of the total orchestra is unleashed once more. There is all the time a way of agitation and anticipation.
In many orchestral passages, the enfant horrible Prokofiev once more got here to thoughts: the grating macabre of The Fiery Angel and Symphony No.3. A later passage recalled Honegger’s Pacific 231. The vital factor about this cavalcade of sound and emotion is that all the things resolved completely on the finish. Maestra Chung’s conducting was superlative: she discovered each the work’s spontaneous thrust and pure cohesion and coaxed the orchestra to a displaying of nice readability and energy.
Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No.1 proved a becoming companion to the opening piece, and it supplied a uncommon alternative for the VSO’s concertmaster, Nicholas Wright, to characteristic as soloist. Wright initially got here to the VSO from the London Symphony Orchestra. Unfortunately, I assumed this turned out to be a little bit of a mismatch. While the orchestra was crisp, lean and dynamically attentive, the soloist’s first entries appeared to recommend an reverse posture. They had been fantastically heat and full (one in all Wright’s lecturers was Gil Shaham), with a constant legato emphasis and comparatively few dynamic shadings. I rapidly missed the work’s mercurial modifications in emotional temperature and tone color.
The violinist appeared to strategy the work extra like a traditional nineteenth-century romantic violin concerto, however the total end result was too heavy and generalized, and the execution typically appeared sluggish. The Prokofiev is a ‘romantic’ violin concerto, but it surely embodies the sharpness and cut-and-thrust of the twentieth-century compositional palette. It requires significantly extra variation in dynamics and tone to penetrate its wit, melancholy and virtually maniacal power. The viewers rightly loved the numerous superb elements of Wright’s enjoying however, on this displaying, the studying stays a work-in-progress for the artist. It wants so as to add sharpness and vary.
On to Beethoven’s Seventh, in one of many quickest and most volcanic interpretations I’ve heard. Frankly, I’m not positive the place the need for velocity and visceral engagement on this work comes from in youthful conductors. Perhaps it stems from the overall pattern nowadays to carry out Beethoven ‘authentically’ at extra pressing speeds, or maybe it’s the residual affect of Carlos Kleiber’s Seventies recording which legitimized a extra white-heat strategy. Or perhaps it merely displays a motion to make use of the work’s tangible energy and power as a automobile to speak on to a now-younger group of classical listeners.
In any occasion, Chang’s interpretation might have pushed this custom one step additional, trying to mission the primary motion with virtually the identical power and molten power because the well-known finale. Add within the thrust of the Scherzo, and one has virtually the entire package deal. The finale began at a fully terrific clip and constructed to a fevered climax the place one felt the orchestra would possibly really explode into chaos if the depth had been screwed up any extra. I absolutely loved watching this design unfold. The conductor’s means to articulate all the things clearly on the quick tempo and with a big orchestra was outstanding. One persistently observed her left hand ‘daggers’ to safe precise string entries.
While one can scarcely doubt its musical dedication, that is most likely not an interpretation of Beethoven’s Seventh that one would flip to every single day. The work can develop into a bit unremitting below an strategy that’s so linear and driving, and it tends to lose a few of its extra mysterious half-lights and sense of the Aristocracy. While the conductor is all the time conscientious over element, the actual fact stays that the winds merely didn’t have a lot room to show character, nor was there a lot scope for selectively tender enjoying. More vital, the well-known sluggish motion couldn’t set up its full gravity below the fleet speeds and (surprisingly) heat and moulded contours chosen. Still, I regard the hassle as real and considerate, and the orchestra should get the strongest reward for bringing this interpretation to fruition.
I felt appreciable remorse when Han-Na Chang put away her cello, however I really feel redeemed by her conducting accomplishments right here.
Geoffrey Newman