A Concert by myself: the first experience.
This article is written as an assignment for MUSIC APPRECIATION (2737110).
Saturday, November 26th, 2022. I've had the chance to attend a concert -- "Thailand Phil Ecstatic Experiences 2022-2023 Season" hosted by the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra. It was the first time in six years since I'd attended a concert, and this will be my first time attending it by myself, so I was fairly excited. I've had many great experiences with Classical Music; I was a musician through and through (and still am!), so it became a natural choice for me that I'd pick it.
The venue for the concert was Prince Mahidol Hall. It is, in my opinion, arguably one of the best concert venues in Thailand. The efforts that have gone into designing the acoustics were reportedly unfathomable, and I can definitely hear the work that went into planning this majestic place.
I was sitting around the back of the venue (tickets for seats closer to the stage were all sold out), yet the sound returned crisp, with just the perfect amount of reverberation.
It was a bit tricky to get to. I heard from my friends at MUID that there'd be a shuttle bus on the day of the concert. I ended up not finding one at all (maybe I was late), but a 547 bus worked fine. It took like an hour from where I live, though.
Originally, the pianist was going to be Russian pianist Alexander Kobrin, winner of the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. But since he was injured in an accident, Armenian pianist Nareh Arghamanyan, the first prize winner of the 2008 Montreal International Music Competition, joined us for the show.
One of the reasons I picked this concert was the piece. Alongside Gustav Mahler's Symphony no. 1, the program offers an arrangement of Thai Traditional Music "Kraw Nai" by Col. Prateep Suphanrojn, Composer in Residence of the Thailand Phil., which was very intriguing. The idea of arranging traditional music into an orchestral rendition is not unheard of. But the arrangement managed to surprise me a lot.
But the piece that hooked me was Sergei Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto.
The story behind this piece was, in my opinion, quite the dramatic one. So-Ham Kim Chung (1988) wrote about the piece as so.
Among Rachmaninoff's five works written for piano and orchestra, the Second Piano Concerto is probably the most popular. Based on fatalism and pessimism, it is filled with an impassioned melancholia and a Russian coloration combined with a brilliant solo part thrown in relief against a sonorous orchestration.
In 1897, after the premiere of his Symphony no.1 in D minor resulted in several harshly reviewed critics, Rachmaninoff, disappointed and his confidence lost, suffered a severe mental breakdown. For three years, he was unable to compose anything aside from sketches and ideas. Until he was eventually introduced to Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a psychologist who used medical hypnosis as a way to help Rachmaninoff fight his mental block. Successful, Rachmaninoff dedicated the second concerto to Dahl.
The second and third movement was finished first, and was given a premiere with Rachmaninoff himself as the performer in 1900. It was a huge success, and the entire concerto, finished, premiered in 1901 to great acclaim.
The Concerto was written in three-movement concerto form:
1. Moderato
2. Adagio sostenuto / più animato
3. Allegro scherzando
…of which the first movement will be the one I will be performing a brief analysis of in this article. I am, by no means, a person knowledgable in musical analysis, but I will do my best.
The first movement, Moderato, is in sonata-allegro form. Ten measures of introduction; chromatic movements inside the chords building up tension…
One thing I noted after taking a closer look at the left hand, the interval spans a whopping minor 10th. The performer remedied it by separating the left hand into a quick arpeggio.
Which then transitions into the start of the exposition. Here, the piano takes on the role of accompaniment, playing arpeggios accentuating on the lowest C of the piano…
The accentuation on C and G came out as really bold in the performance. The pianist was in full command of her instrument, and it really shone here.
to accompany the first theme played by the strings:
The theme is then explored further in the lower register, carried on by the cellos and eventually the entire string section, before soaring into the relative major key with a series of tremolo into an E♭ major chord. A brief transition from the violas is followed by the second theme, now in the relative major.
Theme B was stated by the piano, who takes the solo. Theme 2, in contrast to the gloomy first theme, is significantly more "hopeful" for the lack of a better word.
The development consists of five sections (Chung, 1988, p. 32). In the development contains a small rhythmical fragment:
Which, after a climactic transition with the orchestra playing the motif and the piano accompanying it with dramatic triplets leading back into the tonic…
…into the recapitulation. Here, the piano plays the rhythmic fragment first introduced in the development as accompaniment against the orchestra reintroducing the theme:
The heaviness of the accentuation punches out the feeling of a gloomy march alla marcia.
The second theme, originally in E♭ major, returns in the recapitulation in A♭ presented by a solo horn.
After one last transition, the coda starts softly in pianissimo…
…which slowly ramps up in both speed and dynamics towards the end. A triplet pattern builds up the tension…
…towards a chord notated subito fortissimo, and ending with three fortissimo chords in C minor.
That was long.
My impression of the concert was that I was speechless throughout the entire performance. My brain struggling to absorb all of the information I could possibly absorb (and failing to do so after so much happened during the first movement).
In my interpretation, the piece can be described as a "journey in the fight against depression". As written above, Rachmaninoff was suffering from severe depression before writing this piece. When he was finally cured of his mental block, the first piece he wrote was, indeed, this Second Piano Concerto. The heavy, melancholic first movement contrasted with the relaxing, slumber-like second movement, ending with the playful scherzo of the third movement. This piece is the perfect representation of the emotional state the composer was in: from the weight of his disappointment towards himself thundering down in the exposition of the first movement, to the joy building up in the climax of the coda, ending in a triumphant C major chord. Listening to it in recording was a journey in itself, and being able to listen it live?
You'd have to go experience it yourself, I would say.
After the performance, thunderous claps echoed the hall. I wasn't able to clap because I had suffered a fracture in my left arm a few weeks earlier, but I would if I could.
The pianist bowed, went backstage and came back again to the thunderous applause. This happened twice, but for the second time, she took her seat in front of the piano, and the entire hall fell into silence. Her hands positioned on the keyboard, and she responded to the audience; it was an encore.
Not just one, but two encores. Needless to say, at this point my brain was full of information and I wasn't even able to figure out which piece she was playing. But, it was amazing. I should've asked her when I lined up for her signature at the end of the concert.
Speaking about the end of the concert, we lined up in front of the hall waiting for Maestro Alfonso's and Ms. Nareh's signature.
I ended up missing the shuttle bus, and got lost in the depths of Mahidol University for half an hour.
I managed to eventually get out, but…
Plan your travels, everyone. It's like a maze in here.
Written by: นายอดิศร วชิรานันท์ (6340256722)
References:
Chung, S.-H. K. (1988). An analysis of Rachmaninoff's Concerto no. 2 in C minor, op. 18 : aids towards performance [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1235232062この記事が気に入ったらサポートをしてみませんか？