Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko in West Palm Beach – Nielsen’s Helios Overture & Sibelius 2 – Ray Chen plays Tchaikovsky

Nielsen
Helios Overture, Op.17

Tchaikovsky
Violin Concerto in D, Op.35

Sibelius
Symphony No.2 in D, Op.43

Ray Chen (violin)

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Vasily Petrenko

The concert began with Carl Nielsen’s Helios Overture, named for the charioteer of Greek myth who transports the sun across the sky each day. Nielsen described it as depicting “the sun from its ascent over the dark mountains here in the east until it crackles and shines in its fullest brilliance at midday and finally sinks slowly back behind the beautiful Aegean gulf and the darkening blue mountains in the west and evening and silence fall.”  I could not help but compare this scenario with Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie, which I had in this venue just four days ago (by the Palm Beach Symphony]. Helios gives a robust account of the daily cycle, with Petrenko skillfully managing the gradual transitions between darkness and light, the RPO horns in bright C-major gloriously marking the rising and setting of the sun, brilliant trumpet calls depicting the brightness of midday and a fugue played by the strings. A most engaging curtain-raiser.

Ray Chen played Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with greater exuberance than in any concerto performance I can recall, all but dancing. His instrument produced a lovely, solid tone, and his phrasing was appropriately expressive. Chen’s technique was spectacularly virtuosic, especially in the first-movement cadenza, in which his joyful manner signaled that he was having fun. In the Canzonetta’s opening bars, the woodwinds set a melancholic mood and then teamed marvelously with Chen as his instrument sang out, and he launched the Finale’s fast-paced main theme, living up to its Allegro vivacissimo marking. The slower second subject was played with considerable rubato. The winds were exceptional, offering a sinuous oboe solo, a fine bassoon-violin duet, a solo horn voicing the main theme over Chen’s rapid-fire figurations, and a sequence of wind solos in which each instrument chimed in one after another. Chen and Petrenko, noticeably exchanging glances at one point, were always on the same page, remaining in fine balance despite the often-rapid tempos and wide dynamic range. Chen’s encore was a dazzling arrangement of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ – which he described as the “unofficial national anthem” of Australia, where the Taiwan-born Chen was raised – in which the ghost of the ‘jolly swagman’ was portrayed in eerie harmonics.

After intermission, Petrenko led a stirring rendition of Sibelius’s Second Symphony, drawing fine playing, bringing out both evocations of nature and heroic motifs and gradually fashioning a coherent whole from the disparate fragments that begin the first movement. The strings were outstanding, offering surging chords, rapid runs, and pizzicato playing in dialogue with the winds. A quartet of horns and solo trumpet added touches of grandeur to the mix. After the second movement’s rather calm beginning, Petrenko effectively managed an intensification in volume and speed, building to a huge climax before fading away into a dramatic silence only to build up yet again, this time to a climactic conclusion. The strings were again brilliant in the opening of the Scherzo. After another long silence, the pastoral trio featured Tom Blomfield’s excellent oboe solos, with second iterations of both transitioning deftly into the Finale. There, a heroic theme on the strings soared above rhythmic accompaniments from trombones and tuba. Petrenko built up intensity as the main theme repeated, cellos and violas rumbling and woodwinds whirling. In the coda, triumphant D-major chords in the brass were resplendent.

There were a pair of encores: ‘Morning Mood’ from Grieg’s music for Peer Gynt Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No.6.