Grant Park Symphony just gets more thrilling every time this reviewer sees and hears them play. Tonight’s performance was about as good as it gets - the definition of world-class.
Grant Park Music Festival Features Red Hot Soloist
Flashy pianist Natasha Paremski played Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 outdoors with brilliance and power on an evening with perfect weather. Wearing not the expected basic black dress, but bright red satin pants to go with a black leather super-summery top, Natasha played the piano with red hot passion on par with her outfit, and also true musical depth.
Most Difficult Music Equals Most Glorious?
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) composed four piano concertos – piano solos with orchestra collaboration. The first was a flop, the second is a standard and gets played the most, but the third one is probably the most difficult and demanding for the performer (number four is not programmed so much). The great difficulties in performing this piece are illustrated in the Australian movie ‘Shine’ about pianist David Helfgott —true story—who has a terrible breakdown trying to perform this ‘Rach 3’ ,trying to please his father. He spends much of the rest of his life in institutions trying to recover from the trauma. The movie illustrates the intense difficulties of this piece, and why it is such a rare treat to share the victory of any pianist who pulls off a successful performance such as Natasha Paremski did tonight.
Clearly a magical night was proved to be real when Natasha favored us with an encore of a Chopin piece that felt like ice cream going down after a satisfying meal, cooling us off after the red hot Rachmaninoff.
A 20TH Century Symphony
Conductor Carlos Kalmar wisely programmed the other major piece on this program, Walter Piston’s 6th Symphony, first on the program, with the Rachmaninoff last. ANY orchestra piece coming after the Rachmaninov would be bound to be a let down. Though Walter Piston (1894-1976) and Rachmaninoff lived during the same era they were much different musicians.
Rachmaninoff was a diehard romantic pianist who refused to give into the forces all around him pressuring him to go into avant-garde atonal music, which was considered the progressive and right thing to do during his lifetime., Meanwhile Piston worked as a brilliant academic at Harvard for 45 years. His books on harmony, counterpoint and orchestration were standard texts in music schools for half the 20th century and he taught many of the major American composers of that era. He was also a prolific composer. Piston, like Rachmaninoff did not give in to the very strong academic forces pushing to abandon tonality and write very dissonant, unsatisfying music. He is quoted saying he “just wanted to write music enjoyable to play and listen to”.
Today we might say Piston’s Symphony No. 6 performed on this concert has four very different moods such as you might hear in a movie music soundtrack. The first movement could be described as fluidic and serious. The second movement is very fast, light and lively, using all short notes except a little middle section when the woodwinds play long notes - everything else is played staccato. The third movement, marked Adagio Sereno has an expressive cello solo, a serene flute solo and an English horn solo, all beautifully done. And yes it’s serene, but a little serious and dark.
But all is put right and we’re put back in an elevated mood to fit the music’s creation of a magical evening with an energetic Western style last movement, a very American last movement – just good old fun. So good it almost made this writer want to yell ‘oh yeah!’ at the end.
This particular program will not be repeated but the Grant Park Symphony continues to play through August 18 this summer Wednesdays and Fridays at 6:30 and 7:30 Saturdays, mostly in Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park.
For complete information check the Grant Park Music Festival website
Editor’s Note: To learn more about this summer’s Grant Park Music Festival series, click here to read the Picture this Post preview.
Photo by Norman Timonera
About the Author:
Mark Lindeblad is a working pianist and bassoonist in Chicagoland. He received the Bachelor's of Music performance degree, bassoon major, piano minor from Wichita State University in 1978 and the Master's of Music performance degree in bassoon from Roosevelt University in 1983 in Chicago. While doing piano accompanying was always happening on the side from high school and college years, it stepped up to be Mark’s primary occupation in the 1990's. Today he is a piano accompanist at Glenbard South High School, and plays principal bassoon in the Southwest Symphony, and also finds time for about 20 private students studying either bassoon or piano. For more information, visit Mark Lindeblad’s website: www.markspianostudio.com
