VERBIER FESTIVAL CHAMBER ORCHESTRA playing SJostakovich, Beethoven and Dvorak in Florence.

conductor : GÁBOR TAKÁCS-NAGY 

piano: MARTHA ARGERICH 

trumpet: DAVID GUERRIER

FLORENCE: Every occasion to listen the great argentinian pianist Martha Argerich is a real event, an enrichment for the audience. Her unceasing tireless career, her recordings which have made the history, her revealing performances, her extraordinary piano technique, all this make her a point of reference in piano music of the last decades. In the last years she doesn’t play often as a soloist, but she prefers to perform with young musicians, who for sure have their benefit of playing with her. Argerich’s career is still going on around the world, holding concerts and taking part in musical initiatives that could be heavy for a young man, but that she takes easily.

It was easy to foresee that her return to Florence (even if in an incredibly half-empty theatre!) would have been a triumph, and in this occasion nothing could be better than the music by Dmitrij Šostakovic
. Being in Teatro Comunale, it was easy to think to Argerich’s previous exibition in the same house, in 1987 with Liszt’s Concert n. 1, under the late conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli.

 

The First Concert for piano, trumpet and string orchestra by Šostakovic is a youthful composition of the great musician born in St. Petersburg, who wrote it when he was about 25

. We find already in it the typical characteristics of his mature style, with a very difficult writing for both of the soloists
. This concert it’s not very popular, but hold easily the audience. In this performance the success was so great sensational, that the musicians were almost forced to repeat a part of it, as an “encore”.

Argerich still shows a superlative piano technique, intact after many years of career, she displays all the colours of the score and has a perfect mastery of the keyboard. She’s also an endless source of ideas which are capturated by the conductor and the other soloist David Guerrier, a very good trumpet player
. In the whole, the way she plays, almost grasping the keyboard, is impressive.

Gábor Takács-Nagy has conducted the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, a reliable and experienced conductor, able to hold a strict and very efficient dialogue with the soloists.

 

Dvořák‘s Serenade is a very nice composition, and the musicians played it with pathos and sensitiveness, with a good balance among themselves
. They transmitted to the public a sense of “musizieren” which was very much appreciated and got big applause, so that the orchestra played  two more “encore”, with Mozart’s and Ciaikovskj’s pages.

The performance of Beethoven’s Quartetto Serioso (transcripted for string orchestra by Gustav Mahler) was probably less exciting, but equally very good

. The Verbier Chamber Orchestra icomposed by string instruments, played by young musicians coming from different nations but with a great experience, was founded in 2005.

Altogether a very pleasant performance with fascinating music, that allowed us to listen once again to Martha Argerich, one of the living “myths” of the music, and also part of piano history.  

Fabio Bardelli. (translation Bruno Tredicine)
Florence, Italy, Teatro Comunale, december the 12th,  2011

– Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartett op. 95 “Quartetto Serioso” (transcription for string orchestra by Gustav Mahler)

– Dmitrij Šostakovic: Concert n.1 op. 35 for piano, trumpet and strings

– Antonín Dvořák: Serenade op.22 for strings