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| Maestro Dan Ettinger (courtesy Dan Ettinger) |
The Israel Symphony
Orchestra Rishon LeZion closed the 2020-2021 concert season with an
all-Prokofiev program. Conducted by its musical director Dan Ettinger, guest
actress Tzipi Shavit featured in the third work. This writer attended the
event on July 25th 2021 at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center.
In his opening
remarks, Maestro Ettinger maintained that each of the three works was going to
be a totally different listening experience. Russian Soviet composer, pianist
and conductor. Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (1891-1953) wrote masterpieces of
numerous music genres. He is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th
century. From 1918-1922, Prokofiev was living temporarily in the United States,
a refugee from the Communist Revolution and the unsettled conditions it had
produced in Russia. In the autumn of 1919, he was asked by Zimro (an ensemble
consisting of string quartet, clarinet and piano, all players former classmates from the
St. Petersburg Conservatory then living as refugees in New York City) to write
a piece for them based on Jewish themes, one that would use the forces of the
entire sextet. They presented him with a collection of traditional Jewish
melodies, but Prokofiev, never having used “borrowed” folk material, initially
refused their request. However, impressed by the songs, he began improvising on
the themes at the piano, within two days completing the score. Zimro premiered
it in New York in January 1920. The version heard at the Tel Aviv concert was
the composer’s 1934 orchestration of the Overture on Hebrew Themes, Op.34a. The
touching, bitter-sweet clarinet melody soulfully played at the outset left no
doubt as to the genesis of the work, with the Rishon LeZion Orchestra
presenting the lively sequence of Klezmer tunes, typical of those played at
Jewish weddings and dances, music blending melancholy and joy ("laughing
through the tears") and bringing out their exotic scales, piquant rhythms and
expressive "cantillations". The aim of the mesmerizing piano
figurations in the slower, lyrical sections (piano: Odelia Sever) was possibly to
mimic the hammered dulcimer or tsimbl, a traditional instrument of the Klezmer
ensemble. An exhilarating start to the event!
In addition to being a
brilliant composer, Prokofiev was an avid, eloquent diarist. Shortly after his
26th birthday, he spent a summer on a farm, where, minus his piano, he composed
Symphony No.1 in D major Op.25, “Classical Symphony”. Based on the Classical
concept, it was to be concise and playful, refurbishing traditional classical
forms with modern harmonies, rhythms and orchestral colours. Set in the “sunny” key of D major, it employs the standard forces of a classical chamber
orchestra; following the model of Mozart and Haydn. Prokofiev casts it in four
movements, with each written on a small scale and lightly scored for no
more instruments than of a typical classical symphony. In a piquant and
constantly engaging reading of the work, one combining clarity and formality
with the renegade spirit of Prokofiev’s early works, Ettinger leads the Rishon
LeZion Orchestra in playing that. pours dramatic new content into the Classical
mold, the Classical Symphony’s spiky, non-lyrical themes replacing the
congenial, elegant, lyrical music of Mozart and Haydn. The two outer
effervescent sonata-form movements were performed with energy, whimsy and
attractive, dancing rhythms; in between them, the lyrical, sweetly
romantic-sounding Larghetto was followed by the charming and catchy Gavotte,
the latter suddenly gone as in a puff of smoke. The display of Prokofiev’s tongue-in-cheek
witticism and vivid rhetoric was well communicated to the audience. With the
strings endorsing the general sound, what stood out at this performance was also
the crisp playing of the woodwinds.
When Prokofiev moved
back home to Soviet Russia in 1936, artistic purges were raging. The composer
conformed with the party line by writing “heroic and constructive” works
for adults. To the world, Sergei Prokofiev appeared to be a cosmopolitan
sophisticate, but his family was aware of a different side to his personality.
According to his first wife, Lina, he had always remained a child in spirit,
with a liking for fairy tales, the composer also understanding how children thought and what
amused them. Natalia Satz, director of the Moscow Children’s Musical Theatre,
saw Prokofiev as the ideal composer for young audiences. The two met and
discussed writing an original story: there would be animals, and at least one human.
Prokofiev wrote his own script for “Peter and the Wolf", a Symphonic Fairy Tale
for Children, to be narrated by a speaker and with different instruments
representing each of the characters. Peter is curious and strong-willed.
His world is small, but he isn’t afraid to challenge authority. His goal is
simple: to put right the wrongs he sees in the world. As children, many of us
have grown up with the tale of plucky Peter and his animal friends, at the same
time, learning to recognize the various orchestral instruments. Enter Eli Bijaoui,
a gifted Israeli writer, translator and stage director with an amazing list of
accomplishments to his name. Of the younger generation (born 1978), his new
Hebrew, rhyming text for “Peter and the Wolf” preserves all the detail of
the original, however, brimming with freshness of approach, wit and verve, a
vivid use of the Hebrew language and much to keep the contemporary Israeli
adult audience focused throughout. In her inimitable style, actress, singer and
comedienne Tzipi Shavit went far beyond the role of reciting Bijaoui’s text:
she entertained, ad-libbed and had the audience laughing at her hijinks. This was perhaps a little distracting, but her reading of the text, however, was articulate
(not to speak of theatrical) and well-coordinated with the work’s musical
course. Surtitles gave the audience an extra opportunity to appreciate Bijaoui’s
rich and zesty text. But no less, drawing the listener into the narrative of
this most famous of program works, Ettinger and the instrumentalists gave superb
and suave expression to its characters and drama, indeed, to the beauty of
Prokofiev’s score, in a performance testifying to superior soloing and
orchestral playing. Happily, “Peter and the Wolf” has been liberated from
the exclusive realm of children’s concerts, enabling older listeners to revisit
the work and once again delight in its musical brilliance and charm.
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| The cover of a 1959 Soviet vinyl LP. Peter is wearing the red kercheif of the Young Communists (Melodiya) |
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