by Seby D’Souza
Aberdeen Sinfonietta returned to the Aberdeen Music Hall on Sunday 17th November to play two of the late romantic era’s most popular and influential works: Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 “Pathetique”. Aberdeen Sinfonietta are one of the city’s most prestigious orchestras, so it’s no wonder they were greeted by a packed concert hall.
Pianist Murray McLachlan took centre stage for the performance of Rach 2 and showed an intimate understanding of the piece’s emotional content and history. It’s a beautiful sight to behold a performer as entranced by their playing as the audience they’re playing for, and seeing how McLachlan would look up wistfully from the piano at moments of serenity or rock forwards off his stool at moments of tension expresses an embodiment of the concerto that elevates the experience beyond the musical content.
Outside of McLachlan’s extra-musical playing, his articulation and dynamics were well executed alongside the power of the orchestra, enabling a range of textures. From playing with, to playing over Aberdeen Sinfonietta, McLachlan effortlessly moved between the two in perfect coordination with conductor Garry Walker’s forces.
My one hang up with the performance was the delivery of the piece’s most famous phrase: a “moment a composer touched heaven”. This heart-wrenching release of tension in the second movement is discussed colloquially on social media.. While its grace was certainly present, I believe it lacked appropriate anticipation of the phrase to give the full sense of catharsis I’d been expecting. This could be due to my own lofty expectations of its execution, but nonetheless, it wasn’t the emotional gut punch I hoped it would be. Even if the singular moment just fell shy of what I wanted, the rest of the concerto went above and beyond.
In addition to the scheduled performance of Rach 2, McLachlan returned for an encore playing Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in D major. It worked wonderfully as an extension of the concerto, presenting a more intimate follow up to the bombastic finale of the fourth movement.
Following the intermission, the orchestra returned to stage for the performance of Pathetique. Without a solo instrument, Walker unleashed the full force of Aberdeen Sinfonietta, filling the Music Hall with Tchaikovsky’s final symphony written before his death. The piece passes melodic lines around the different sections of the orchestra, presenting a duelling of instruments in dramatic fashion.
That isn’t all for theatrics, however: Walker’s performance as conductor was striking. The role of conductor in an orchestra is to aid the musicians’ in keeping time, puppeteering moments where it is indeterminate (e.g. rubato) and expressing articulation/dynamics, but with a group as highly skilled as Aberdeen Sinfonietta are, this role is less necessary. With the difficult part of his role fulfilled, Walker was enabled to be flashier in his conducting. While this is true of Rach 2 too, he was mostly concealed by the grand piano, which takes precedence in its concerto. As an audience member, I was concerned that this would negatively affect the music at the cost of the spectacle (maybe it did in the previously discussed criticism of Rach 2), but it only made for a more gripping, passion-fueled performance. Walker’s movements ranged from erratic to miniscule, even going so far as to briefly squat for a particularly dynamic part.
As a whole, the concert was excellent. It was a very easily enjoyable night that was accessible to both fans and critics of late romanticism. The choice of works to play was perfect, and no doubt played a role in the high audience attendance. Both pieces share strengths and stylistic choices, complementing each other to make for a mystical, melancholic and memorable night.