Nearly 2,000 concert-goers witnessed pianist Ralph Votapek’s astonishing performance of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 26 in C Major.
Classical pianist Ralph Votapek
SPRINGFIELD –: A glorious, uproarious abundance of Russian music raised the rafters and dusted out the dark corners of Symphony Hall Saturday evening, as Maestro Kevin Rhodes and the Springfield Symphony Orchestra tore into compositions by Borodin, Prokofiev, and Tchaikovsky.
The program was deftly selected to present a unified “accent” in the repertoire. Borodin’s “Prince Igor” Overture introduced the “language” for the evening, consisting of melodies of sober, childlike simplicity draped in harmony and counterpoint as rich and intricate as the designs on a Faberge egg.
When Rhodes and the SSO undertake an all-Russian program, the results are dependably stupendous, and Saturday was no exception.
The highlight of the concert was pianist Ralph Votapek’s astonishing performance of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3, Op. 26 in C Major.
Fifty years ago, at age 23, Votapek won the Gold Medal in the very first Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth Texas, playing the Beethoven Fourth Concerto and the Prokofiev Third Concerto, among many other works.
A half century has only enhanced and strengthened the music-making of this fine pianist. Votapek delivered the fiendishly difficult concerto with the relaxed confidence, control, clarity of thought, electrifying precision and intensity that mark the instrument’s greatest masters. It was the kind of playing that puts the “grand” in grand piano – the kind of playing practiced and championed by Van Cliburn, Earl Wild, and their contemporaries in the mid-20th century that focused on the music rather than the player.
During the pre-concert onstage “classical conversation” with Rhodes, Votapek recalled many aspects of that historic turning point in his career, remarking that he felt he had “been in the right place at the right time” to win the first Van Cliburn Competition, which the visiting Russian musicians surely expected to sweep, at the height of the Cold War.
As it happened, Arthur Fiedler had engaged Votapek 3 months before the competition to play the Prokofiev 3rd six times with the Boston Pops in Boston Symphony Hall. It’s hard to imagine a better dry run than that!
Rhodes and the SSO stuck with Votapek through every twist and turn of the thrill ride that is the Prokofiev 3rd Concerto, negotiating the careening unison passages like a single mammoth instrument, providing a feverish haze of pastel harmony behind the piano’s gangly melodies in the middle movement. All three movements were applauded, and the concerto earned a boisterous standing ovation that brought Votapek back to the stage for three bows.
Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 17, nicknamed the “Little Russian” for the Ukrainian folk melodies woven into its texture, was the other significant work presented on Saturday. Laura Klock delivered the opening French horn phrases with appropriate solemnity and simple beauty, and then the movement galloped off, propelled by anxious, syncopated countermelodies all decorated by Tchaikovsky’s orchestrational expertise.
Incisively played and elegantly shaped, the March and Scherzo movements paled by comparison to the Finale, an ingenious working out of the Ukrainian folksong “The Crane.” Tchaikovsky took the tune, which rivals “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” for simplicity and memorability, through unbelievable transformations of rhythm, harmony, and counterpoint, showcasing the talents of every orchestral family, and knitting the whole into a triumphant, exuberant display of Russian nationalism, sure to bring any audience to its feet.
The 1,960 concert-goers responded enthusiastically on Saturday. According to SSO staff, some 200 of those patrons had taken advantage of Rhodes’s audience-building offer at the October 19 performance by the Arturo Somohano Puerto Rican Philharmonic Orchestra to give a free ticket for Saturday’s all-Russian program to anyone presenting their ticket to that concert.