“FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE” Review – Piano Soloist Series February 20-22, 2025

By Charles E. Gerber

Last Friday night my discerning concert going companion and I had choice Orchestra seats on the aisle with me now, having previously visited a number of times since 2022, more than confident of the acoustic excellence we were about to experience in the highly successful sonic renovations that have taken place on this site since Covid shutdown five years ago. 

My guest and I had the opportunity of attending the New York Philharmonic Piano Soloist Program for February 20 -22 which featured Shostakovich’s Selections from Moscow, Cheryomushki Suite, Prokofiev Piano Concerto #2, Shostakovich’s. Symphony # 15 under the baton of Santtu-Mattia Rouvali with piano soloist, Seong-Jin-Cho.

Indeed, among the rare blessed byproducts of that too recent plague was the 18 months interim that finally, after some 60 years, led to the redress of the abysmal acoustics of what was originally called Philharmonic Hall, and for a time Avery Fisher Hall, (when they half – measuredly tried to fix it and failed) and now, with the massive donation of Mr. David Geffen, this venue is aptly named after the California mogul of media whose finances and sensibilities allowed them to finally get the sound, Goldilocks, “just right”. 

At present this New York treasure and America’s most venerable music institution is sans a Music Director, since the departure of the superlative Jaap van Zweden, who held that post from 2018 through 2024. I’d been beyond impressed by that maestro’s command of his repertoire and the obvious affinity that he possessed with this notoriously demanding – of- conductors- orchestra.  We won’t have the arrival of the newly appointed leader at that job until the truly dynamic, perhaps the most exciting choice since Leonard Bernstein, Gustavo Dudamel, having left the directorship of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, commences his reign as the 27^th Music Director, since Ureli Corelli Hill first held that position in 1842. 

Consequently, as enticed as my companion and I were by the chosen program selected from the two giants of 20^th century Russian, albeit Soviet composers, our mutual ignorance of the particular skills of the guest conductor, and relatively young soloist allowed us initially, to be somewhat apprehensive. I rejoice in stating that such apprehension was utterly unwarranted. 

Santtu –Matias Rouvali has been chief conductor of the esteemed Gothenburg Symphony for the past eight years and is completing that tenure in 2025. He simultaneously remains principal conductor of London’s Philharmonia Orchestra as well as honorary conductor Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra. 

Pianist Seong-Jin Cho has since becoming a finalist in 2011 at the age of 17 in Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, has in the fourteen years since established himself as one of the most distinctive keyboard artists of his generation. His performance of one of the most demanding concertos of the previous century demonstrated with abundant clarity as to why. 

The program itself consisted of three disparate works spanning the years 1913 for the original edition of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto sandwiched in between two works of Shostakovich which could not have been more different from one another: Moscow, Cheryomushki of 1957-58, and his Symphony #15 of 1971, which was his last. 

As an aperitif for this Russian feast of the evening we first heard a suite from the operetta,” “Moscow, Cheryomushki” that Shostakovich composed and was arranged by one A. Cornall, consisting of  “A Spin through Moscow, Waltz, and Dances”.  

This was perhaps the lightest musical offering from this composer that I’d ever heard and that includes his delightful arrangement of Vincent Youmans’s, “Tea for Two” from “No, No, Nannett”.  I was well aware of this wide-ranging master’s musical whimsy, but this surpassed that genre as he no doubt intended for this particular assignment. 

“SHAMELESS!”, my friend exclaimed at the completion of the 14-minute piece, and apparently, its author concurred: “I am mortified with shame. If you are thinking of coming to the premiere (as he wrote to his friend, Isaak Glickman), I advise you to reconsider. It’s boring, insignificant, silly.” I hasten to report that my friend made his exclamation with considerable glee in his approval, as did Glickman who found it to be lyrical, witty and attractive. Rouvali and the Philharmonic gave the rendering of the piece the same panache that this organization gives every time they play Bernstein’s Candide Overture, which I found to be in a very similar vain. 

Next came one of my all-time favorite compositions of the early 20^th century and indeed my favorite of the five concertos Prokofiev wrote for piano and orchestra, his #2. in G minor. This piece is something of a miracle in that it was first conceived and performed by the composer, whose pianistic skills were to say the least formidable in 1913, merely a year after graduating from the Moscow Conservatory and in a stroke of historic chutzpah, won the Anton Rubinstein prize, the most coveted of piano competitions then extant, playing his own Piano Concerto #1 In D flat, Op. 10 before the severe judges. That work usually runs about 16 minutes depending on the alacrity of and accuracy of the soloist as well as the temperament with whosoever is wielding the baton.   

Prokofiev wished in the following year to provide a piece at least twice as long, and perhaps at least half again as deep. He succeeded brilliantly in that he enraged much of the first audience at Vauxhall in Pavlovsk Park with several patrons fleeing from what they concurred to be mere cacophony, while the more discerning and adventurous auditors realized that they were hearing a masterpiece of uncompromising logic as well as virtuosic daring do.  

Now, as many are aware, this genius while still in his twenties left his mother Russia just around 
the time of the end of WW I and the fall of the Romanov dynasty. He became a world-renowned pianist and composer of every musical genre to be heralded in nearly all world capitals, particularly Paris, where he settled for about a decade. In this span of time, his manuscript of the second concerto perished in a fire and for his premiere of that work in his adopted city in 1924, he was forced to recall what he’d written eleven years before, and newly create what he could not. 

Such is the G minor Concerto we heard played by Seong-Jin Cho and our orchestra and Lord did we hear it full and clear! Mind you, the technical demands of this work daunted the composer himself whose brilliance at the keyboard rivaled Rachmaninoff, or for that matter, that upstart from Kyiv, Ukraine making his name at that time, Vladimir Horowitz. 

 This 31-year-old. Mr. Cho dazzled in every department that this composition evokes. From the intense lyricism of the opening Andantino, to the fierce Scherzo: Vivace, which could not have been livelier. What impressed me the most, other than his exquisite sonority was the sheer abandon with which he played the passages that have been known to terrify many a virtuoso, including as aforementioned, the composer himself. Be advised then to reckon Seong – Jin Cho as worthy of your assiduous attention in any concert venue you may attend, or recording you may seek out. It is only fair to declare here that the support of the Philharmonic, with self-evident enthusiasm under Rouvali’s baton, was superb. 

As far as extension of enthusiasm on the part of the orchestra and this particular guest conductor towards this last entry of the program being Shostakovich’s ultimate, his 15^th, venture in symphonic construction, what a journey it was and remains in this reviewer’s memory from last Friday. Here was his Op 141 in A and it was worth the wait on this evening, as well as it was as the 20^th century was entering its last quarter.  Much has been written and related regarding the critical roller coaster ride Shostakovich endured during Stalin’s reign of intermittent terror until the dictator’s death on March 5^th, 1953, improbably, but truly the same day as the death of Prokofiev! 

By 1971, Shostakovich had experienced all that both world’s embrace as well as the hot to cold to warm then hot once more reception of the Soviet’s critics of varying authority. By the time of his 15^th symphonic work, one may well reason that he was able to not give a proverbial you know what from whatever could be published or discussed by anyone throughout the empire. I consider this work reflective of the last and best of Eugene O’Neill’s, or perhaps even Shakespeare’s final Romances of the early 17^th century, such as The Winter’s Tale and/or The Tempest. He simply wrote what he thought, felt, and according to his son, Maxim, who premiered the work, dreamed to convey. Rouvali’s account with our orchestra in this hall of acoustic marvel was clear, concise, and to my ears, enchanting. My companion particularly enjoyed the Cello solo, and of this, and of the concert as a whole, I could not argue.  

It was a revelation to be introduced to these two already internationally acclaimed artists. Their names and skill sets are now set in my mind and I look forward to further encounters here or wherever Fortune find us. 

Photo credit: Brandon Patoc

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