A rare CSO night where every piece was good. Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider conducted:
- Nielsen: Overture to Maskarade
- Dvořák: Cello Concerto in B minor, with Jian Wang
- Tchaikovsky: selections from The Sleeping Beauty
Jian Wang in the Dvořák.
The Nielsen is light and cute, a good way to open. Then the Dvořák, sweet to the point of excess. The recipe: take a handful of folk-flavored tunes, write variations on them, stack them up, and voilà, the most popular cello concerto ever written. Wang played it with style and attitude, and it came out refreshing rather than syrupy.
I’ve played with Wang before, in Zhao Lin’s Du (度), a double concerto for cello and sheng after the monk Xuanzang’s journey west. Wang calls the cello Xuanzang’s humanity and the sheng his Buddha-nature. Very meditative. Xuanzang crossed deserts; I counted rests. Nice memory.
The Sleeping Beauty was the best part. It’s a complicated, delicate score, and the orchestra played it flawlessly. Everyone knows about the CSO’s strings and percussion; the brass is just as good. From the royal ball to the fairies and the jewels, you hear everything Tchaikovsky put in.
My boyfriend said it sounds a lot like The Nutcracker. Not entirely wrong: same composer, same theater, two years apart.