HIGH NOTES
Kremlin combines accuracy, intensity
The Impromptu Concerts, the Keys’ chamber music organization, added a special concert to the end of its season with a performance by the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, conducted by Misha Rachlevsky, at a venue unusual for the series, the Tennessee Williams Theater. Fourteen string players, including three cellos and a bass, offered an all-Russian program of music by Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev. They played with a combination of accuracy and intensity which few musicians we’ve heard here could match.
The Prokofiev piece was his Visions Fugitives, a series of short pieces ranging over a variety of moods. Originally written for piano, it has been transcribed for string orchestra. The group played it with a sound which was spare and disciplined, but intense.
The next offerings on the program were three pieces by Tchaikovsky for solo violin and orchestra. The soloists, outstanding members of the violin section, all gave models of fine violin playing. None of them ever overplayed. Their vibratos were short and rapid, avoiding any hint of sentimentality. Some of the passages were of extraordinary difficulty technically, but were played with relaxed authority. Accompaniment by the other strings was warm and full.
After the intermission, the group played Tchaikovsky’s “Souvenir de Florence,” originally written for string sextet and later arranged for full string orchestra. Their playing was consistent with the high standard of the rest of the concert; of particular excellence was the richness of the second, adagio, movement.
In all these pieces there was clarity of sound, resulting from the precision with which they played together. One of the most difficult effects to achieve in music is true unison in strings. By comparison, say, with tubas, where the notes come out rounded, like puff balls, notes on stringed instruments have narrow, sharply honed front edges to them, so that any imprecision in either time or pitch is instantly and emphatically obvious. The lush sound of many string sections is really the result of their not playing together very well. That was never true of this group. Coming as they do out of the great Russian tradition of string playing, their unison was consistently impressive, and rewarding. They could hit their instruments hard when that was called for, holding nothing back, and with no dissension, no loss of accuracy, in the unison. This seemed to me especially remarkable, considering that playing triple forte always runs the risk of distortion.
The Chamber Orchestra Kremlin has an interesting history. Its founder and conductor, Misha Rachlevsky, grew up and trained musically in Russia, but left in 1973 for a career in chamber music worldwide, which included the founding of new chamber orchestras in the U.S. and Spain. In 1991, with a recording contract in hand and seeing an opportunity to build on the events of that year in Russia, he held auditions and formed the orchestra.
Since then it has recorded more than thirty CDs, and tours regularly all over the world.
The other afternoon one could see why.
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