United States Blossom Competition 2024 [2] – Borodin, Arutiunian, Rachmaninoff: Michael Sachs (trumpet), Cleveland Orchestra Refrain (refrain director: Lisa Wong), Cleveland Orchestra / Domingo Hindoyan (conductor). Blossom Music Middle, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, 13.7.2024. (MSJ)

Borodin – Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor
Alexander Arutiunian – Trumpet Concerto in A-flat main
Rachmaninoff – Symphony No.3 in A minor, Op.44

Domingo Hindoyan made his Cleveland Orchestra debut on the Blossom Music Competition in an all-Russian program. It began with the return of a as soon as commonly-heard showpiece, Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances. Within the mid-twentieth century, some fools began the Balkanization of classical music by sloughing off crowd-pleasers like this one to ‘pops’ concert events. The decline of recognition and relevance of classical music started about the identical time (shock, shock). Could such items proceed to be introduced again into the fold of normal orchestra concert events as a result of that’s the place masterpieces belong, even when they’re colourful as a substitute of profound. Dine on a weight loss plan of philosophy and trauma day by day, and you’ll go as mad as Nietzsche. Enjoyable music issues.

Alexander Borodin was a full-time chemistry professor and part-time composer. He approached composition like a chemist, all the time experimenting to see how totally different musical tones interacted, and the way the introduction of a harmonic change may ship a bit off in a brand new route. The Polovtsian Dances are from his unfinished opera Prince Igor, and so they have been a typical operatic excuse for lavish singing and dancing. However greater than most set items, these dances are masterpieces of musical chemistry. After the whirling introductory dance, Borodin spins out a mellifluous melody and paired countermelody of virtually unbelievable size, adopted by wildly addictive quick tunes with beneficiant percussive assist.

This efficiency of the dances fortunately included the Blossom Competition Refrain, the summer time iteration of the Cleveland Orchestra Refrain, directed as all the time with alacrity by Lisa Wong. The vocal contribution enriches the already luxurious dances, and so they have been a delight to come across right here. Daniel McKelway began issues off with the skirling clarinet solo, which he completed with verve even at Hindoyan’s brisk tempo. The tempo was on the fringe of manageability, although extra troublesome was the conductor’s disregard for the Blossom pavilion’s acoustics which have a tendency towards the resonant. A barely much less harried tempo would have let the music open up just a little extra.

Hindoyan set down his baton to direct the next lyrical dance along with his naked palms, softening the orchestral response and serving to to form the ebb and move of the attractive melody. He picked the baton again for the next quick dances, directed with effectivity and with out quite a lot of extraneous gestures. He set the baton again down for the à tempo recap of the lyrical theme, which was maybe not a good suggestion: the rhythmical underpinning from the earlier dance continues, or ought to proceed, crisply. Hindoyan barely relaxed the tempo, and his flowing palms didn’t assist the rhythmic traces keep targeted. Everybody pulled it again collectively and continued on. The conductor resumed use of the baton and pushed the dances to an thrilling conclusion.

The visitor soloist for the night was the orchestra’s personal principal trumpet, Michael Sachs. Nonetheless in outstanding type in his thirty-sixth season with the orchestra, he introduced a preferred brass showpiece for its Cleveland Orchestra premiere, Alexander Arutiunian’s Trumpet Concerto. With out the advocacy of trumpeters, who’ve solely a small repertory of solo items, this concerto would very presumably sink into the obscurity of most of Arutiunian’s different works. He was one of many largely faceless Soviet composers who toed the road of writing the type of folk-influenced, non-threatening, non-political, non-experimental music that Joseph Stalin wished. However on this concerto, he paired a colourful strategy with a fanfare-like principal theme that simply sticks within the reminiscence. Contrasting the virtuoso fireworks with some glorious lyrical passages made the piece successful.

Sachs is the orchestra’s golden lion and listening to him within the Arutiunian concerto was a delight. He can simply prime all the ensemble along with his wealthy, burnished tone, or hearth out quick notes with blistering accuracy, however he confirmed an aesthetic restraint. In a single pleasant passage, Sachs demonstrated his regard for his colleagues, controlling his quantity to let the strings sing and citing his personal stage on the finish of phrases: his sound emerged, then settled again into the string wash, then emerged once more. Hindoyan stored in step all through, letting Sachs take the lead and shine at key moments.

Hindoyan, who’s chief conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic in England, savored the challenges of Rachmaninoff’s Third Symphony, arguably the hardest nut to crack of this composer’s orchestral items. Rachmaninoff’s only items go darkish, resembling his First Symphony, the Symphonic Dances, or the Paganini Rhapsody, heard within the first Summers at Severance live performance simply two days beforehand. Within the Third, the exiled Russian composer tried to select up the shattered items of his earlier life and reassemble them, however after twenty years of rootless life in western Europe and the USA, he found the items not match collectively. The piece is fitful and episodic as Rachmaninoff tries to pressure nostalgia and shaky optimism collectively, skirting the darkness that retains lapping at its edges.

I heard André Previn conduct the piece with the Pittsburgh Symphony twenty-five years in the past, and it speaks effectively for Hindoyan that his grasp of the work is comparable. Principal clarinet Afendi Yusuf took the quite a few poignant solos, with principal horn Nathanial Silberschlag nailing his noble solos. The orchestra illuminated the piece with heat, embodying the story of Rachmaninoff’s life as mirrored in his music.

Mark Sebastian Jordan