PRINCETON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA STAFF
Leila Josefowicz performs with Princeton Symphony Orchestra.
There was everything you would expect at a birthday party: a personalized cake, a big bouquet of roses, heartfelt speeches and fine music with close friends.
Princeton Symphony Orchestra brought all those warm surprises to weekend concerts titled “Rossen’s 60th Birthday Celebration,” Jan. 11-12, to mark music director Rossen Milanov’s milestone. The celebratory program of Russian music paired the sweeping romanticism of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony in B Minor with the lighthearted neoclassicism of Igor Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major, featuring guest artist Leila Josefowicz.
At the Jan. 12 performance at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium, Milanov conducted Manfred with a sense of occasion. He turned the orchestra loose and the effect was exciting and intense. Josefowicz shared a warm rapport with both him and the musicians, and showed off her athletic range of playing — confident and spontaneous.
Before the show, a large birthday cake was rolled out onto the stage and the orchestra’s assistant conductor, Kenneth Bean, led the musicians and Josefowicz in an orchestral arrangement of the traditional “Happy Birthday” song, to which the audience sang along. Milanov, who turned 60 on Jan. 13, thanked concertgoers and said he was looking forward to celebrating his birthday with music and his best friends.
It is exactly what he set out to do this season, reflecting on his musical journey and growth since becoming music director in 2009. Programming includes his favorite works and collaborations with his favorite artists, plus educational and artistic partners from the surrounding communities of Central Jersey, cultivated over 15 years of leadership.
One of those close friends is Josefowicz, whose intensity and verve for playing adventurous, contemporary works made the perfect match for Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto (1931). It was written during his Stravinsky’s neoclassical period, in which he departed from the avant-garde experimentation of his earlier style and embraced cleaner structures and moods, with a nod to musical conventions of the Baroque era. The two outer movements (the Toccata and the Capriccio) use fast, perpetual tempos with virtuosic, playful passages while the two inner movements (Aria I and Aria II) are styled on the slower movements of Baroque concertos.|
The concerto has a collaborative heart, with plenty of duet work. (Stravinsky, a pianist, called on violinist Samuel Dushkin to advise him on compositional and technical matters.) In Aria I and the dazzling Capriccio finale, motifs were tossed back and forth between Josefowicz and principal musicians in thrilling contrasts, including couplings with concertmaster Basia Danilow and bassoonist Brad Balliett.
While the technical demands of the work are relatively tame, there are plenty of rippling, rapid notes and Josefowicz found them all, fresh and delightful. The orchestra excelled in the faster, outer movements, driven forward by the special “passport chord” of three notes — D, A and E — that Stravinsky used to tie the musical narrative together.
PRINCETON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA STAFF
Rossen Milanov conducts Princeton Symphony Orchestra.
Milanov highlighted the many dissonant twists of Stravinsky’s writing and captured the vibrant spirit of the work. Josefowicz tapped into the shifting, rhythmic energy with a powerful bow, and always put clarity over showmanship.
Milanov has done much to propagate Russian and Soviet repertoire during his tenure; past seasons presented major masterworks by Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff. In a September interview with NJArts.net, he spoke about his affinity to Russia music, saying, “It’s part of my DNA because I’m a Slav, I’m born in Bulgaria. Russian music was a very big part of my upbringing and I speak the language fluently.”
Tchaikovsky’s Manfred is about as ambitious and demanding as Russian repertoire gets. Composed in 1885 between the Fourth and Fifth symphonies, it is Tchaikovsky’s largest symphonic work in both length (around one hour long) and instrumentation (notoriously intricate), and is infrequently performed due to its prohibitive scale, difficulty and complexity.
Milanov has conducted it around a dozen times in his career and his familiarity showed. He explored every shade of emotional depth, from tenderness to suffering, and found all the compassion and humanity between. This wasn’t a heavy-handed, indulgent treatment typical of the Russian School. It was bold and muscular, but never over the top, with a fine attention to detail and a vivid musical imagination.
The high romance of the story, based on Lord Byron’s dramatic poem from 1817 of the same name, was well suited to the mellow, resonant and dusky shades of the orchestra, which was padded here and there with additional musicians and guest principals.
The first movement, Lento lugubre, painted a lush, visual treatment of the bucolic Alps that Manfred wanders in reflection of his lost love, represented by two ethereal harps, led by principal André Tarantiles. Strings, led by Danilow, filled Manfred’s musical theme with melting lyricism. Lower woodwinds projected the impulsivity and intensity of Byron’s tormented protagonist with effective tension. The famous coda was rich and layered with decisive attacks by brass, and chilling percussion effects coordinated by principal Phyllis Bitow.
PRINCETON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA STAFF
Leila Josefowicz looks on as Rossen Milanov admires his birthday cake at The Richardson Auditorium.
Both inner movements — Vivace con spirito and the Andante con moto pastorale — were attentive to detail, and Milanov kept things cohesive, with sensible tempos. Agile and delicate phrasing by principal Pascal Archer on clarinet and guest principal Sooyum Kim on flute made for a colorful fairy scherzo, and the extended siciliano of the Alpine hunters in the pastoral interlude was played with sensitivity by principal horn Steven Harmon.
In the Allegro con fuoco bacchanal, Milanov whipped the orchestra into a powerful frenzy. Quicksilver rhythms created exciting perpetual motion. Here he used the altered version, which cuts the organ (or harmonium) and repeats the spectacular coda from the Lento lugubre, resulting in a thundering, thrilling climax. This differs from Tchaikovsky’s full original score, which uses a serene and poetic ending, and culminates in a fugue and organ climax to underscore the peaceful redemption of Manfred’s death.
While the altered ending changed the intent and emotional impact of the piece, it was well suited to the celebratory occasion.
Milanov’s birthday festivities will continue into the summer. In a surprise announcement made by the symphony’s executive director, Marc Uys, superstar soprano Renée Fleming will appear in recital with Milanov and the orchestra on June 7 as part of the June 6-21 Princeton Festival. It is hard to imagine a better birthday gift than that.
For more about the symphony’s future concerts, visit princetonsymphony.org.
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