Courtesy of Brian (who officially started work with us last week after some ridiculous limbo involving a hiring freeze), Saturday was a more interesting night than usual.
Vladimir Feltsman played Rachmaninoff’s Third piano concerto with the symphony. Sadly, I didn’t like his performance. Feltsman is one of those narcissitic players who doesn’t seem to highly value the ensemble between soloist and orchestra. Certainly there was no need for the frivolous tempo changes that were highly distracting – especially the needless rushing of the ends of the fast passages which pretty much guaranteed the orchestra would be off when the big chords came along. Furthermore he just didn’t seem to have a sense of line. To me, Rachmaninoff is all about the huge, sweeping, melodic lines that go on for pages and pages over highly dense accompanying textures. And so cutting those lines into little pieces that are delimited by inexplicable tempo shifts is just unforgivable.
I guess it doesn’t help that I think of Rach 3 as a somewhat overrated warhorse. Like all Rachmaninoff, there are some good passages just dripping in schmaltz, if you like that sort of thing. But overall, especially in the third movement, it can get to be interminable.
It’s worth noting that I seemed to hold the minority view about Feltsman; the rest of the audience gave him a standing ovation. So I guess if you can play the piece, then that’s worthy of praise right there; e.g. David Helfgott. (Yes, I’m not impressed by him either. But then, I can’t play the piece – I only managed Rach 4′s first movement.)
Afterwards Brian introduced me to Le Pichet, a neat French cafe close to Pike Place market. There we met up with David, the lead trumpet player of the symphony, and over unbelievably good charcuterie, cheese, and far too much Côte du Rhône, we slagged Feltsman, reminisced about New York (them, not me), dismissed atonality, gossiped about the orchestra, and otherwise discussed housing and good eats (Brian, being a Salumi refugee, is well versed on such matters).
On a random note, I just realised that I now live extremely close to my clone. I am somewhat weirded out by this.
