PROKOFIEV: MORE MODERN THAN THE MODERNS 
                                              By D. Rane Danubian
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of March 17-24, 2009
                                                                  Vol. 11, No. 79
          After a 20-year wait, the London Symphony returned for a visit here and showed itself to be an elite orchestra in the front ranks of international ensembles.
            The Londoners are excellent at deciphering the elaborate hand-waving, finger-wiggling conducting of its Russian Principal Conductor (what we would call music director) Valery Gergiev, who avoids symphony-concert batons like the plague. In a program March 16 at Davies Hall, they dispatched an unfamiliar Prokofiev evening as if it were mother’s milk.
            Their array of players are individually impressive, right down to the contrabasses and the bassoon soloist (Rachel Gough, apparently feeling right at home playing just a block away from Gough Street). But the essence is the sweep of the ensemble, beautifully coordinated as a unit, surging along like a giant wave responding to Gergiev’s open gestures.
            We hear little of the fantastically talented Ukranian-Russian  composer Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) apart from his “Romeo and Juliet” music, the Classical Symphony and one or two of his concerti. But he wrote extensively and eloquently in almost every genre---opera, symphony, ballet, solo piano, chamber music, even one extraordinary flute sonata (Op. 94). His versatility often matched Stravinsky’s, though he was not nearly as skilled at public relations and media.
            He divided his career between composing and piano performance, and between east and west as well (USA, Paris, the USSR). He remains controversial today, derided by both musicologist Richard Taruskin and various anti-Communists. Elsewhere he is praised for writing with variety and feeling despite the ultra-tight artistic control maintained by the Stalinistic government. And just when it appeared he might attain a greater measure of artistic freedom, he died near Moscow the same day as the repressive dictator Joseph Stalin.  
            The London Symphony program brought out two contrasting Prokofiev symphonies---The torrent of an angry young man, as heard in the Symphony No. 2 (1925), and an overly light touch showing the inroads of ill health in his last completed work, the inconsistent Symphony No. 7.  
            The tuneful Seventh you may well recognize, an ingratiating invention starting off with a soaring theme in minor key in a substantial first movement, then moving on to a highly balletic Scherzo movement which however you are unlikely to encounter in a ballet (what dance company can squeeze a big orchestra with six percussionists into the pit?). The last two movements however are vapid in comparison. And the composer’s flagging inspiration might account for repeated use of segments reminiscent of the “Romeo and Juliet” Balcony Scene music of a generation earlier.
            The Second in contrast has the voice of a young revolutionary---not in politics, but in music. The piece is far more violent and dissonant than what today’s composers are producing. Prokofiev clearly relished the clashing brass, the forceful timpani, the fortissimos, and, in general, an orchestra with overt internal dissension. It was no doubt a potent reaction against humdrum romantic hangovers prevalent in the concert halls of the day---Gliere and Glazounov dominant in Russia, Elgar in Britain, MacDowell, Chadwick and others  in America.
            The structure of the Second followed that of Beethoven’s last piano sonata, Op. 111---two movements, the first in sonata form, the second a subdued one in theme and variations. If Prokofiev’s first movement is like a volcanic eruption, the second is mollified, with a plaintive oboe solo sounding the theme. It gains momentum to prodigious volume, then fades away to nothing at the end of the 38-minute span.
            The concert also featured Beethoven’s ubiquitous “Emperor” Concerto, notable this night mostly for the overachieving timpani. Russian soloist Andrei Volodin was clean, predictable, nimble---no tricks, no guile, no keyboard-pounding.
            The enthusiasts were accorded an encore: The grandiose-satirical March from “Love of Three Oranges,” by the same composer. The previous night, the orchestra encored with a “Romeo and Juliet” excerpt, and in addition Volodin had done a solo encore.
            THE FOUR HANDS OF THE PIANO-VOLODXX’S---Confusion abounds between two current artists, Volodin and Arcadi Volodos. They are both piano stars, both Russian, both thirtyish (or a bit beyond), both major prize-winners of the past. But of course unrelated. Volodos has made his reputation as a fire-eater, more in the Horowitz mold.
            London Symphony on tour at Davies Hall, S.F., March 15-16, under S.F. Symphony auspices. For SFS info: (415) 864-6000, or go  online.
        ©D. Rane Danubian 2009

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        D. Rane Danubian has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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