May 29, 2023 | Tchaikovsky Concert Hall
Subscription Series No. 71: “National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia”
Soloist – Vladimir Spivakov, violin
Conductor – Arsenty Tkachenko
Wagner. Prelude to "Lohengrin"
Berg. Concerto for violin and orchestra
Zemlinsky. Die Seejungfrau (The Mermaid)
The National Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia is completing the concert season in Moscow with a special program. It includes masterpieces of Austro-German symphonism: the Introduction to Richard Wagner's opera “Lohengrin”, the Violin Concerto by Alban Berg and “The Mermaid” by Alexander Zemlinsky. Vladimir Spivakov who will make happy his admirers with a long-awaited violin performance in a great symphonic genre will play the solo part in the Concerto. Arsenty Tkachenko will direct the concert.
During the latest decades, Vladimir Spivakov has concentrated his activities mainly on conducting while playing the violin only in chamber ensembles. He introduced the famous Concerto by Berg from the golden treasury of world music literature and one of the most expressive and complicated works (in Spivakov's opinion) into his repertoire about 25 years ago, The musician recorded it with the Gürzenich Orchestra from Cologne under James Conlon. Then he performed it at the Colmar Festival (France), in the closing concert of the Second Edition of the “Vladimir Spivakov Invites” Festival in Moscow and in the last season concert at the Moscow Performing Arts Center in 2018.
Critics saw Spivakov's rendition of the Concerto as “an intense acute experience”: “Under the soloist's magic the performance was gradually filling with life, and the Finale was ended with such an iridescent mystic chord full of light, that the audience had to sit still fascinated. Even only for this final chord, the Concerto was worth playing. One would like to hear the Finale once more...” Composer Vladimir Tarnopolsky said that Vladimir Spivakov's “poignant interpretation” was one of the steps for staging Berg's “Wozzeck” at the Bolshoi.
Alban Berg's Violin Concerto, his last work, was dedicated to “The memory of an Angel” – the untimely died 18-years old Manon Gropius, very talented actress, daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius. The structure of the Concerto suggests a “double Requiem” (musicologists think that the composer had foreseen his own soon demise that was reflected in the score).
To Alma Mahler (born Schindler), whom Alexander Zemlinsky taught composition, is also related “The Mermaid” fantasy. Zemlinsky wrote the work at the intersection of a romantic symphony and a program symphony poem, based on a literary source, a fairy-tale by Andersen, on one side, and, on the other side, on the reminiscence of his own personal tragedy, that is, his unhappy love for his student Alma Mahler who had preferred his friend Gustaw Mahler.