Cover image: pianist Nathan Lee (Photo: Matt Dine)
Festivals highlighting a particular composer often give an insight into how he developed (I’ve never heard of one for a woman composer, not yet), and this week’s Seattle Symphony two-concert festival of concertos and one symphony by Prokofiev is a case point.
The first, Thursday night at Benaroya Hall, contained his first three concertos, written in his early 20s, two for piano, one for violin, all precociously brilliant works. The inventive branching out from the tried and true, the ideas behind it, the imaginative development, all bespoke the promise of the future, and there are hints of his later unmistakable harmonic signature. Both piano concerti, which Prokofiev himself premiered aged 22 and 23, are technical feats of wizardry for the pianist. Appropriately for the young and gifted composer, on Thursday all three soloists and the conductor were also young and gifted.
Nathan Lee, aged 16 but looking even younger, gave a performance of the first concerto, in D-flat major, that was both memorable and extraordinary. It’s played as one movement, though with three distinct sections. Lee’s command of the work was obvious from the first notes. His playing sounded authoritative and decisive, sharp-edged, clearly delineated in the fastest runs, in all of which every note had its appropriate dynamic, the whole youthfully ebullient and fun. The slower section had transparent clarity and richness while it gave time for Lee to shape phrases. Despite myriad notes executed at incredible speed, I noticed only one single time when Lee hit two notes instead of one as his fingers flew over the keys. This was a highly musical performance. Lee does not bang on the piano, although there were many opportunities to do so.
The notable synchronization between Lee and Pablo Rus Broseta, the orchestra’s associate conductor, was a marvel to hear. It’s rare to hear such absolutely exact togetherness between soloist and orchestra throughout a work, yet it was there.
It was not quite so tight in the violin concerto, No. 1 in D major, where William Hagen often seemed to play a shade before the orchestra. What was remarkable here was his light floating tone, the sound seemingly just released from his violin, a Guarneri del Gesu recently given him on a long loan. This concerto, too, is technically extremely difficult, with not just fast notes in jagged order over all the strings but multiple sections at the softest volume on the violin’s highest notes possible, where Hagen stayed perfectly in tune, never easy at this pitch. This concerto is much more one of the solo instrument being part of the orchestra fabric rather than way out front, particularly in duet with the winds, which is where the slight feeling of being out of kilter showed most. It’s a colorful work full of melody, imagination and abrupt endings and it would be easy for the soloist to hack at the faster louder sections, digging them out of his instrument. Hagen did not, allowing them to sing as much as the softer moments. Not as showy as the piano concertos, Hagen’s fine playing received considerable applause from an audience not as big as usual.
Prokofiev took only a year between the first and second piano concertos, but it is clear how much his ideas developed in that time. This concerto, in G minor, is longer with many abrupt mood changes and even trickier technically. It was composed during the year following the suicide of one of his friends to whom it is dedicated, and it’s the contention of soloist Conrad Tao, who is already making a name for himself as a composer as well as pianist, that this remembrance pervades the concerto under its energetic and lively exterior. Certainly Tao brought out the emotions in this, like Lee with musicianship which did not include pounding on the instrument at loud moments. One could feel the anger smoldering under one part, the anguish in another, the beating of a head against a wall in yet another, while it is jauntily flip in a section very slightly swung. There are clashing stops, tuba blasts, drum accents, and towards the end a long contemplative and gentle piano soliloquy. Tao made the most of all the concerto’s variety, the technical side being no hindrance to him.
After rapturous applause, he played Scarlatti’s A major Sonata K 208 for an encore.
An excellent conductor, Rus Broseta directed the orchestra with sensitivity to balance with the soloists and clear direction.
