Violinist Gil Shaham guests with the Madison Symphony Orchestra for its January program.
Three Russian composers feature in the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s January program, premiered on Friday evening at Overture Hall — but ones very different from each other.
John DeMain has long sought the celebrated violinist Gil Shaham as a guest soloist, and he arrived at last to make a great show out of Tchaikovsky’s extravagant Violin Concerto. To his credit, Shaham leavens his unquestionable virtuosity with restraint and even delicacy when these matter. He and DeMain particularly relish the lyrical episodes in the raucous finale. Throughout, however, Shaham’s physical gyrations are unconventional, to say the least. He lurches about, often playing to the conductor or even the orchestra instead of the audience. His facial grimaces express his delight in the music, even suggesting surprise at what he has just played. This certainly does indicate his deep involvement in the music — to be part of it, rather than on top of it. It is a performance as much of personality as of playing.
On Friday, the audience adored it, giving him a standing ovation after the first movement alone, as well as at the conclusion. His (inaudibly announced) encore then was the familiar "Preludio" from Bach’s Partita No. 3 for unaccompanied violin.
He is one soloist whom MSO audiences will not soon forget.
Sergei Prokofiev’s absurdist opera The Love for Three Oranges was composed in the U.S. and was not a success; but, in good Russian fashion, Prokofiev drew an orchestral suite from it. Though its six movements contain one gracious love scene, the rest (including the once-familiar "March") are brash and provocative, appropriate to the composer’s youthful persona of noisy modernism, if not also an audience-rousing program opener.
For a serious musical experience, the final work is Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3. Written 15 years after Prokofiev’s music, it is still in the late Romantic style. Long overshadowed by his second symphony, maestro DeMain valiantly has brought it to the MSO audience for the first time.
In an unconventional three-movement form, it is a composition of great intensity and intricacy. The casual listener may enjoy the episodic shifts among awfully good tunes, and Rachmaninoff’s orchestral palette is always lush. But the score deserves careful listening, to appreciate the composer’s clever and subtle exploitation of his thematic resources, all united in their links to a recurrent “motto,” with even a characteristic reference to the “Dies irae” chant. The orchestra plays heroically and DeMain carefully delineates all the complex lines.
The program repeats at 8 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 20-21, at Overture Center.
