Orchestra Hall, Detroit
Sunday, November 3, 2024
Orchestra Hall, Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center, Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Michigan
The afternoon following the night before. Whatever happened the previous evening in the first concert, this second presentation was on its own terms a knockout. Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony (Opus 100) is closely associated with Leonard Slatkin – he led it prior to becoming DSO music director, during his tenure and, now, following it, and there’s also a fine St. Louis recording (see below). The first movement felt epic, vistas opened up, details precise, and with a sure course to demonstrative climaxes. The Scherzo, athletically addressed and rhythmically adroit, incorporated the languorous sections without them sticking out, and the staggered acceleration near the end accrued judiciously. I had not previously considered how Romeo and Juliet-like (Opus 64) the slow movement is, and there was a beguiling balletic lightness of touch to the Finale, and closely observed interplay, making the mechanistic coda all the more a sting in the tail, trombone glissando and all.
Daniel Slatkin’s Voyager 130 (the still-travelling, info-sending spacecraft, plus Beethoven for the number and the sublime ‘Cavatina’), on its third outing for me, has lost none of its cinematic and suggestive power; indeed I found even more in it this time around. Two reviews, including background, below.
As centrepiece, Rachmaninov’s magnificent (twice revised) Piano Concerto No.4 – impassioned music with many engaging and memorable ideas, piano and orchestra on an equal footing, something underlined here given the seasoned rapport between pianist, conductor and orchestra, so that flexibility, and ebb and flow, occurred naturally, strengthening the greatness of this superbly orchestrated Concerto, the DSO certainly played its part, with Olga Kern technically and musically on target with the work’s stature … masterpiece.
Encores – Kern played powerhouse Prokofiev – the C-minor Etude – with many notes per second, and Slatkin gave an extra too. Following the Symphony was his wife Cindy McTee’s transcription (from a recording) of some of Alfred Newman’s music for The Song of Bernadette, with violin and cello solos to represent respectively Leonard’s father (Felix) and mother (Eleanor Aller), both leading members in Hollywood studio orchestras.