Sun 8/15
Karina Canellakis has added many “firsts” to her resume lately. She conducted the annual Nobel Prize concert with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the first female conductor to do so; she is also the first female conductor to be named chief conductor of the the Netherlands’ Radio Filharmonisch Orkest and the first female conductor to be named chief conductor of any Dutch orchestra. In July 2019, Canellakis became the first female conductor of the First Night of The Proms, at the Royal Albert Hall. In April of 2020, the London Philharmonic Orchestra announced the appointment of Canellakis as its new principal guest conductor, the first woman conductor named to the post. Sunday evening, August 15, Canellakis made her conducting debut with The Cleveland Orchestra at its splendid summer home, Blossom Music Center.
She bolted onto the stage a tiny marvel of dynamism. She opened the evening with “The Wood Dove,” a dramatic interpretation of one of four symphonic poems composed by the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák. It has only been performed one other time by the Cleveland Orchestra, in 2016. The piece is based on a fairy tale of a woman who poisons her husband (a funeral march) to wed another man (a happy dance). She experiences a telltale heart when she hears a dove call above her late spouse’s grave, her guilt is too devastating and she takes her own life (an andante in which the dove is heard in the winds and harp).The piece is wistful and haunting and was the perfect opening to tempt the audience into a most engaging second piece, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor for Piano, Trumpet and String Orchestra.
This imaginative performance featured Cleveland Orchestra’s own world-renowned principal trumpeter, Michael Sachs, and a commanding piano performance by Behzod Abduraimov.
Shostakovich’s first performance of Concerto No.1 was performed with his friend Alexander Schmidt on trumpet and the composer as soloist on piano. Shostakovich was a brilliant performer who enjoyed instant admiration and praise for his composition and for his distinguishing strengths as a pianist. The genius of the composition lay in its combination of virtuosic strength, which morphs into tender and lyrical spontaneity and into temperamental minor heaviness, back into a triumphant final galop.
It’s hard to imagine a finer duo in the world of superlative solo musicians to undertake this virtuoso roller-coaster than Sachs and Abduraimov. Mr. Sachs’ performance was not only technically flawless but his demeanor matches that of the composer, as he effortlessly leads his audience on a romp of emotional complexity that ranges from boisterous to melancholy to exultant, in a mere 20 minutes of splendor. His execution was never showy but was complemented perfectly by the technical acuity necessary to accompany the grandeur of Mr. Abduraimov’s accomplishment. The video projected on the large screens gave the audience an added appreciation of the technical demands of the piano passages and of the marvelous balance in the dialogs between the orchestra players and soloists. The duo trades barbs with wit in one moment, then glides into Russian heartbreak, and back into ascendancy. The audience jumped to its feet for numerous and very ecstatic ovations.
The second half of the program matched the intensity of the Shostakovich concerto with a rendition of Tchaikovsky’s illustrious Symphony No. 4 in F minor.
Canellakis was a highly regarded concert violinist before embarking on her stellar trajectory as a preeminent conductor. She is expressive and passionate in her musicality while conducting. She appeared to feel the intense restraint in Tchaikovsky’s dramatic opening of his fourth symphony. The opening is supposed to represent a metaphor for Fate or, as Tchaikovsky wrote to his benefactress, Nadezhda von Meck, a wealthy widow: “the fatal power which prevents one from attaining the goal of happiness.” Ms. Canellakis seemed to coax optimism from the oboe melody at the beginning of the second movement, and exulted in the joy of the finale, until she empathized with the predestined approach of Fate, rearing its gnarly theme back to end the piece. Ms. Canellakis’s vibrancy, blended with the composer’s genius, exploit with this renowned orchestra’s achievement, and came out with an alchemist’s recipe for a celestial and charismatic achievement.