The Israel Camerata Jerusalem opens its 2018-2019 concert season with a program of late Romantic Russian concertos

Maestro Uri Segal (jcamerata.com)

Taking place on October 6th 2018 in the Recanati Auditorium of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the first concert of the Israel Camerata Jerusalem’s 2018-2019 “La Tempesta dei Solisti” series presented a program of concertos by late Romantic Russian composers. Under the baton of Uriel Segal, the orchestra hosted three young visiting artists: Kristina Miller-piano (Russia/Germany), Sophia Bacelar-‘cello (Cuba) and Kristine Balanas-violin (Latvia). Prior to each concerto, the audience watched a short film in which the soloist introduced herself and her musical involvement.

 

The program opened with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.3. Premiered in 1909 in New York City with the composer as soloist, it was the first of many American triumphs for Rachmaninoff, who would ultimately make his home in the United States. The last of the great Romantic pianist-composers in the lineage of Chopin, Liszt, and Rubinstein, Rachmaninoff joined Brahms in the concept of the fusing of concerto- and symphony forms. From a musical family, Kristina Miller (b. Moscow, 1986) began her piano studies at an early age, soloing in Mozart’s Concerto No. 23 at the age of eight. Miller’s Tel Aviv performance attested to her great love- and respect of Rachmaninoff’s music. From the nostalgic Russian-type opening theme, her playing was lyrical, tender and poignant, her handling of the work’s more intense moments well controlled but never emerging muscular or showy. Also characterizing the Tel Aviv performance was the masterful interweaving of the work’s orchestral “solos” and those of Miller, as well as some haunting wind solos. Miller then gave a virtuosic and well contrasted performance of Rachmaninoff’s stormy Musical Moment No.4 in E-minor.

 

Resulting from Tchaikovsky’s love of 18th-century music, his Variations on a Rococo Theme, op. 33 reflect an ideal- if distant world for which Romantic composers felt great nostalgia.  Written for- and with the help of  Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, a German ‘cellist and fellow professor at the Moscow Conservatory, it was Fitzenhagen who gave the premiere in Moscow on November 30, 1877. At 22 years of age, Cuban-Chinese-American ‘cellist Sophia Bacelar is quickly gaining recognition in the world of classical music but she is also broadening the reach of her music by introducing it in alternative venues and through contemporary media. Playing on a historic ‘cello restored by her father, Bacelar is an artist of much temperament, presenting the variations’ different moods, displaying the ‘cello's ability to sing long lyrical melodies, then enlisting her consummate technique for variations of an extremely virtuosic nature, as she launched into grandiose cadenzas, spectacular trills and double stops, yet never losing sight of the work’s main theme. Her solo Spanish-style encore was a veritable tour-de-force.

 

A violinist in great demand on the international scene and considered one of the most versatile and inspiring violinists of her generation, soloist and chamber musician Kristine Balanas (b.1990) explores new repertoire as well as bringing young energy to the classics. The Israel Camerata Jerusalem’s Tel Aviv concert concluded with Balanas soloing in A.Glazunov’s Violin Concerto in A-minor op.82. Written in 1904, the concerto was dedicated to violinist Leopold Auer, who gave its first performance in 1905 at a concert of the Russian Musical Society, St. Petersburg. The Concerto's three movements are played without pause, the connections almost seamless from one to the next. Performing on a 1787 Antonio Gragnani violin, Balanas is an artist of sophistication and subtlety. Her sense of spontaneity lent natural, unimpeded flow to the Glazunov Concerto’s rich colourings, its large cadenza (Glazunov’s own) and to the work’s rhapsodic moods and expressive intensity, ending the finale with genial and extroverted rapture. For her encore, she performed Paganini’s Caprice No.17 with charm and whimsy.

 

All the concertos in the Israel Camerata Jerusalem’s current “La Tempesta dei Solisti” series have been arranged for chamber orchestra by Mordechai Rechtman (b. Germany 1926), a bassoonist renowned for his many arrangements for wind ensembles and of Classical and Romantic concertos. Rechtman was present at the concert.

 

Maestro Uriel Segal (b. Israel, 1944), conducting with a light touch, made for transparency of sound, well-delineated melodic playing, a lush symphonic sound and sensitive collaboration between orchestra and soloists. Segal conducts and records widely in Europe, Japan, the USA, Canada and Brazil. Laureate conductor of the renowned Chautauqua Festival in New York State, he is also laureate Conductor of Century Orchestra in Osaka, Japan, an orchestra he founded and led for eight years. He has served as music director of the Louisville, KY Orchestra, was principal conductor of the Philharmonia Hungarica and the Bournemouth Symphony, music director of the Israel Chamber Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony. He has also been principal guest conductor at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, Bloomington.