Then after dinner, Michael headed back home, and I raced back over to Carnegie Hall. While we were walking around earlier, I noticed that Valery Gergiev was conducting his Kirov Orchestra tonight, and that the concert was opening with Stravinsky's "Les Noces" (The Wedding). I've always been intrigued by "Les Noces" due to its instrumentation: besides four vocal soloists, the "orchestra" consists of various percussion instruments and four(!) pianos. I have a few recordings of the piece, but I've never seen or heard it performed live. Well... When I got to the box office - right around 7:59! - they still had a couple of decent cheap-ish balcony seats left, so I bought myself a ticket, then head up the stairs(!) to the balcony to get settling into my seat.
What a very interesting - and I mean that in a good way - performance. "Les Noces" is based on rustic, folk Wedding Rituals. It is not "pretty" music. There is no lushness to the score. However, the folk origins of the music are always in evidence. And to my ears, it sounded like the soloists were instructed to color their voices toward the "raw" side of their vocal palate, very earthy. It worked for me - although, I suspected some people around me were hoping for some more beautiful singing. Well, since the second half of the concert consisted of the second act of Borodin's "Prince Igor", they had plenty of "beautiful singing" to look forward to.
I almost left after "Les Noces" since that's all I really wanted to hear, but since that would have made for a rather short (25 minutes) concert experience, I stayed for the second half. And I'm glad I did.
Valery Gergiev and his Kirov Orchestra are known for their virtuosic performances, with plenty of touches of "Russian abandon and passion" when called for. Well, they did not disappoint in that respect tonight. The second act of "Prince Igor" is the source of the popular "Polovtsian Dances" - which would later be re-fashioned for the musical, Kismet. The Dance sections were lush, rich and exciting, and in some of the rowdier numbers, literally ground-shaking and hair-raising. You could just sense the audience wanting to burst into applause as the last dance built to it's final notes.
The vocal soloists for Prince Igor were all impressive, however, I would have to give the soprano and tenor the vocal honors for the evening. I was also impressed with the clarinet player who was featured quite a bit. How he kept up with some of Maestro Gergiev's "racier" tempos was a wonder to hear.
