Dresden Philharmonic
Usher Hall - 21/04/24
Stanislav Kochanovsky, conductor | Maria Ioudenitch, violin
Over the years the Usher Hall have done a great job in bringing superb European orchestras for Sunday concerts to remind us of our European cultural heritage. With Brexit this has become more difficult, so well done to them for keeping up the tradition. Sadly, the audiences don’t seem to be responding in great numbers, as the Usher Hall was only half full this Sunday evening. Maybe the normal Sunday afternoon time would have been more successful, or Edinburgh folk might have responded in larger numbers to the Dresden Philharmonic’s new principal conductor, Scotland’s own Donald Runnicles. The orchestra certainly deserved a bigger audience; they are one of Germany’s, and indeed Europe’s, finest orchestras and on this occasion had an excellent Russian conductor, Stanislav Kochanovsky, for this Russian influenced programme.
The concert began with the lovely delicate prelude from Mussorgsky’s great opera ‘Khovanshchina’. Unfortunately, this is rarely performed in Britain but, having seen it in Moscow and at Covent Garden, I think it is well worth a look; there are several versions available on YouTube including one led by Gergiev with the Mariinsky opera. The prelude, entitled ‘Dawn on the Moscow River’, is much quieter than the opera itself. It gave the Dresden the chance to show off their gorgeous string section and their lovely wind players; at just 5 minutes it was over all too quickly.
This was followed by the Mendelssohn violin concerto, a favourite of concert audiences, played by a very fine young American-Russian violinist Maria Ioudenitch, who was born in Russia but moved to the USA with her Russian family when she was a small child. She has been winning major music competitions all over the world and is already established on the concert circuit. After listening to her today I predict she will be a star of the future.
The major work after the interval was Tchaikovsky’s final symphony No 6, often known as The Pathetique - as Timothy Dowling in his very good programme notes says this should be interpreted as “passionate” rather than pathetic. Certainly, Tchaikovsky regarded it as his finest work. It gave the Dresden the chance to show off their fireworks with their great brass and percussion section reaching a climax at the end of the third movement, which as always makes the audience think the symphony is over, before the orchestra slides quietly into the last section, the slow adagio. At the end of that our conductor held off the audience’s applause for a full minute. He and the orchestra were deservedly rewarded by very warm applause. It’s a pity there weren’t more there to share it.
Cover photo: Bjoern Kadenbach
