Concert Review: The Philadelphia Orchestra @ SPAC, 08/17/2023

Yo-Yo Ma, ill with COVID, pianist Emanuel Ax a welcome and distinguished replacement.

Arguably earth’s most famous musician – who’s not a Beatle or Rolling Stone, a Beyonce or a Taylor –cellist Yo-Yo Ma was to play Dvorak’s tuneful Cello Concerto Thursday at Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Performer and composition are hot tickets, literally: Thursday’s ticket reads “Yo-Yo Ma plays Dvorak.”

When Covid forced Ma to bow out of performances at SPAC (Thursday) and Tanglewood (Sunday, Aug. 13), replacing him on what must have been very short notice brought in pianist Emanuel Ax to perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 with the Philadelphians, Soprano Renee Fleming filled in at Tanglewood. 

Happy applause greeted Ax Thursday, very much a star in his own right and longtime friend and colleague of Ma; with Leonidas Kavakos, Ax and Ma will tour this winter in their “Beethoven for 3” project.

Composed a century before the Dvorak (1896), the Mozart (1784) was scored for winds and strings and said to have been inspired by a tune the composer’s pet starling sang. It has deft melodic feints and surprises and subtle or abrupt modulations between uplifting happiness and downcast despair.

Ax played from memory, no score resting on his Steinway to guide him through the piece. The piano’s looming lid completely hid conductor Xian Zhang. Video screens showed her movements to be precise and contained, unlike her more energetic gestures in the Prokofiev that followed. This fit: the Mozart felt demure, its humor and pathos understated, in contrast to the Prokofiev’s brassy boldness.

Early in any classical performance comes a moment when, as many times as I may have heard a piece in recordings, new nuances emerge from the stage. Fresh sonic or emotional details eclipse in live performance, even what a good stereo (remember those?) delivers. 

On Thursday, in the Mozart, where I could gratefully see Ax’s hands from my seat (Section 3, row U), I could also hear with new clarity the woodwinds in the Allegro, appreciate grand dynamic shifts between swelling strings, admire the clarity of Ax’s unaccompanied piano in the Andante and the famous bassoon part in the finale, the Allegretto-Presto. 

Ax fluently negotiated dynamic shifts in his own playing and, when idle at the keyboard, closely watched the orchestra behind him, bobbing his head and greeting their precision playing with a smile. He was fully engaged not only with the Mozart but also with the Philadelphians.

Many stood for curtain calls afterward, then sat again in surprise as Ax returned for a brief solo encore – Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s “Standchen” – a delicious, delicate gelato of melody.

The orchestra doubled in size for Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony (1945). Four double basses in the Mozart grew to eight; two harps joined the strings; a percussion section of timpani, snare and cymbals set up at the rear and; most powerfully; massed brass took their place behind the woodwinds.

Penned in the waning days of WWII when victory seemed inevitable if not yet near, Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony expresses a vigorous martial momentum even more aggressively than his score for Sergei Eisenstein’s film “Alexander Nevsky” (1938). 

Another great Fifth Symphony premiered the year before by Dmitri Shostakovich. While a contrite Shostakovich meekly accepted a reviewer’s description of his Fifth as “a Soviet artist’s no-nonsense response to fair criticism” (some reportedly from Stalin himself), Prokofiev is triumphant in his Fifth. He said he wrote it to express the greatness of the human spirit.” This ambition, however, links the two: Reviewer Alexie Tolstoy hailed the Shostakovich as defining “the formation of a personality.” But we digress, so let’s close the loop and note that Prokofiev and Stalin died the same day: March 5, 1953. Yeah, watch “The Death of Stalin.”)

The piano moved from center stage deep into the orchestra, conductor Zhang became clearly visible on the podium, transformed in kinetically leading Prokofiev’s grand statements.

The piece, at times, is dominated by sheer mass and might of thunderstorm percussion and robust brass choruses. But even in the muscular Andante (first movement) and Allegros (third, Allegro marcato, and fourth (Allegro giocoso), contrast was rich and compelling. Prokofiev’s melodic gifts flowed rich and strong.

In the Andante, lyrical cellos and woodwinds followed imposing percussion passages before massed brass drove the movement to a forceful coda.

The Allegro marcato started with comparable energy but settled into a pastorale pause before staccato trumpets restored a mood of martial menace as Timpani thundered behind.

The Adagio offered an oasis, slower and smaller waves of sound, anchored in the low strings, then shifting higher, wider.

The vigorous finale, Allegro giocoso, also began slowly, then built in thrilling, inexorable surges. These explosions framed a quieter, somewhat more reserved passage where harps, piano and string soloists reduced the sheer force of the orchestra but not its energy – which then surged in massed triumph.

Even among powerful blasts of tight-knit brass and pounding percussion, Prokofiev left space for contrasting moods, not only between the two main themes of the piece but in development that differed, sometimes wildly, in rapid mutations.

Earlier Thursday, I’d seen half a band replaced by substitutes at Jazz on Jay, forming the POKH Quartet. At SPAC Thursday, replacing one masterpiece with another, and one virtuoso star for another, proved just as satisfying.