reviews
Concert Review: Calgary, May 11, 2009
A stunning new piece, about 160 years in the making. Monday's audience at Calgary's Singer Hall was treated to a stunning display of virtuosic piano artistry.Celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Felix Mendelssohn, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra (in collaboration with the Honens International Piano Competition) presented an evening devoted solely to the composer's works. As one would expect, Mendelssohn's disposition for bold thematic statements, fugal counterpoint and romantic lyricism dominated the program, which included the evocative Hebrides Overture Op. 26 (Fingal's Cave) and the energetic Sinfonia for String Orchestra No. 10 in B minor. The superb direction given by Canadian conductor Julian Kuerti provided an evening of music characterized by fluid phrasing, dynamic contrasts and appropriate tempi.
The centrepiece for the evening was the North American premiere of Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 3 in E minor, performed by the eminent Italian pianist, Roberto Prosseda. Along with his wife, Alessandra Maria Ammara (2000 Honens laureate), Prosseda was also featured in a seamless performance of the Concerto for Two Pianos in E major, a jewel in the concerto repertoire which deserves to be heard more often.
The presence of the Honens competition in Calgary is largely responsible for bringing the considerable talent of Roberto Prosseda to this city, indeed for making the premiere of the third piano concerto a reality here. The work is a reconstruction of an unfinished manuscript discovered as recently as 2006 in the Bodleian Library at Oxford by the Italian conductor and Mendelssohn scholar Marcello Bufalini, whose expert knowledge of Mendelssohn's compositional style facilitated the writing of an orchestration for the completed solo parts in the first two movements and the adoption of a highly plausible final movement in rondo form. Bufalini based the finale on the fragment of a beginning idea, an unharmonized main theme, and indications of a few secondary motives - mere sketches left by the composer at the time of his death in 1847.
Monday's audience at Calgary's Singer Hall was treated to a stunning display of virtuosic piano artistry, which, combined with Kuerti's brilliant interpretation of the orchestral scores, produced a homogeneous three-movement work that bears the authentic trademarks of the German master. Prosseda, who holds exclusive rights for performing Bufalini's score on concert stages around the world, delivered a vibrant interpretation of "salon" intimacy to this work, which was balanced expertly by the Calgary orchestra. The second movement was clearly reminiscent of the composer's Songs Without Words, a movement beautifully supported by the wind players. And the reconstructive composition in the final movement did not disappoint. Prosseda's economic yet rhapsodic technique contributed convincingly to a work which celebrates the genius and craft of Felix Mendelssohn.
Ian R. Charter
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