Symphony Preview, November 1 and 2: Hits and Misses

Critics sometimes get things very, very wrong.

Ivanovka, the Rachmaninoff family estate in Dresden. By Unknown author, Public Domain

Stéphane Denève returns to Powell Hall this weekend (Saturday and Sunday, November 1 and 2) to conduct the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) and violinist Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider in a program titled Passion and Drama. Not surprisingly, it consists of two major works by Russian composers. One was a disaster the first time around while the other was a hit—but only after the composer suffered a disaster followed by a three-year writer’s block.

The disaster is the first work on the program, the Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893). Although wildly popular these days, this romantic classic was originally dismissed as “unplayable” by St. Petersburg Conservatory violin professor Leopold Auer (to whom it was originally dedicated and who was supposed to play it at its premiere). Tchaikovsky’s colleague Adolf Brodsky replaced Auer as both the first performer and the dedicatee.

Tchaikovsky circa 1875 by Panov, M. (Photographer). Public Domain

Although generally well-received by the audience at its 1881 Vienna premiere, critical reaction was mixed. Writing for the Morgen-Post, Dr Oskar Berggruen called it “original and effective” while the Neues Wiener Tageblatt’s critic Wilhelm Frey groused that it was too Russian (I know, right?). The reviewer “ff” in the Wiener Abendpost also praised it but observed that the concerto “divided the audience for and against this original work.”

The review that got the most attention, though, came from the Neue Freie Presse’s Eduard Hanslick, the notoriously conservative critic (sarcastically described as “the self-appointed guardian of music’s most sacred shrine” by Brockway and Weinstock) who Wagner had mercilessly parodied a decade earlier in “Die Meistersinger.” After admitting that the work was “musical and is not without genius,” Hanslick went on to unload a tub of bile that would not be out of place on Truth Social. It’s worth quoting at length, if only to illustrate just how clueless critics can sometimes be.

For a while the concerto has proportion, is musical, and is not without genius, but soon savagery gains the upper hand and lords it to the end of the first movement.

The violin is no longer played. It is yanked about. It is torn asunder. It is beaten black and blue. I do not know whether it is possible for anyone to conquer these hair-raising difficulties, but I do know that Mr. Brodsky martyrized his hearers as well as himself.

The Adagio, with its tender national melody, almost conciliates, almost wins us. But it breaks off abruptly to make way for a finale that puts us in the midst of the brutal and wretched jollity of a Russian kermess [contemporary equivalent might be Oktoberfest]. We see wild and vulgar faces, we hear curses, we smell bad brandy.

Friedrich Vischer once asserted in reference to lascivious paintings that there are pictures which ‘stink in the eye.’ Tschaikowsky’s violin concerto brings to us for the first time the horrid idea that there may be music that stinks in the ear. (Tschaikowsky and His Orchestral Music by Louis Biancolli, 1944)

Today it can be hard to understand what Hanslick was gassing on about. Mostly it seems that he was offended by the fact that Tchaikovsky was not German, and worse yet, not Brahms.

In any case, the Vienna performance was successful enough to result in offers to repeat it the subsequent season. The following year saw performances in London, Karlsruhe, Moscow, and Berlin as, Hanslick notwithstanding, the concerto started to gain traction. Performances in Paris, Prague, and New York followed shortly after as audiences came to appreciate that Tchaikovsky’s only violin concerto was an unfailingly sunny piece that never fails to please. Yes, it’s technically demanding, but generations of violinists have mastered it and made it a central part of the repertoire.

Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider’s discography is wide ranging, including concertos by Mozart, Nielsen, Elgar, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn as well as chamber works by Brahms. There’s no Tchaikovsky but he has recorded Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 2 and Glazunov’s sole concerto, both with Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony. Szeps-Znaider is, in any case, a not unfamiliar face here, having both conducted and played with the SLSO in the past. He and Denève are also friends outside of the concert hall, a fact which, in my view, often adds another layer to the collaboration between conductor and soloist.

The success born of disaster is the Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27, composed by Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) from October 1906 to April 1907. He dedicated it to Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev (1856–1915), a popular and influential composer, writer, pianist, and teacher. Taneyev ‘s composition pupils included Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, and he was also a friend of Tchaikovsky. It was Taneyev who played the Moscow premiere of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

Rachmaninoff in 1906. By Unknown author - Public Domain,.

Rachmaninoff wrote the Second Symphony at the family estate, Ivanovka, in Dresden, where he and his family had moved to escape the political turmoil in Russia. This is where he also composed his famous tone poem Isle of the Dead. It had been a decade since he had written a symphony, mostly because of the universally negative reception of his Symphony No. 1 in D minor in 1897.

The bad reception wasn’t really his fault. The performance itself was a debacle. The orchestra was under-rehearsed, conductor Alexander Glazunov, a notorious alcoholic, was said to be conducting under the influence, and critics hated it. Vituperatively. It threw Rachmaninoff into a fit of depression from which he recovered only after three months of hypnotherapy by Dr. Nikolai Dahl, an early advocate of hypnotism as a therapeutic tool.

As a sort of coup de grâce, the score of the D minor symphony was left behind in Russia when the composer emigrated in 1917 and was considered lost until it was reconstructed from its individual parts after World War II.

The Second has fared much better. The premiere on 26 January 1908 in St Petersburg was acclaimed by audiences and critics alike and was subsequently awarded the Glinka Prize of 1,000 rubles. “After listening with unflagging attention to its four movements,” wrote composer and critic Yuli Engel (quoted in Julian Haycock’s 2022 article for BBC Music Magazine), “one notes with surprise that the hands of the watch have moved forward 65 minutes. This might be overlong for the general audience, but how fresh, how beautiful it is!”

That last sentenced turned out to be prescient. Western audiences in the ‘20s and ‘30s were more interested in spare, neo-Classical material, so Rachmaninoff reluctantly agreed to cut around 300 bars out of the work, reducing the run time from just under an hour to around 35–40 minutes. However, shortly before his death, he confessed to the conductor Eugene Ormandy (one of his most devoted champions), “You don’t know what cuts do to me. It is like cutting a piece out of my heart.

These days conductors prefer the original version. Based on the estimated performance time in this weekend’s program notes, that appears to be Maestro Denève’s preference as well.

The symphony’s playlist for the upcoming concert includes the second of Leonard Slatkin’s two recordings of the piece. It’s a live 2009 Naxos recording with the Detroit Symphony, Slatkin’s first one having been done with the SLSO back in 1979. It was a quadraphonic (four-channel) release on LP and the mixdown to stereo had the unfortunate side effect of eliminating the auditorium ambience captured in the original.

The SLSO recording is, as far as I can tell, uncut. The Detroit recording isn’t but is generally regarded as superior to the original. I am, therefore, providing links to so you can decide for yourself which is the better.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the SLSO and soloist Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No.2. Performances are Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, November 1 and 2. The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3, and will be available for streaming at the SLSO web site for a month, starting the week of November 3.

You can hear an audio preview of the music on the program by Tom Sudholt and yours truly on Symphony Preview Wednesday, October 29, from 8 to 10 pm on Classic 107.3. The show will also be available for streaming for a limited time on the Classic 107.3 web site.