Music of another universe

The Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra performed in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal and concluded its tour with a performance of Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s First and Sixth Symphonies at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. According to the press, Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra presented “flawless Tchaikovsky,” and at every town and city on the tour map the public gave “stormy applause.”

In The Seattle Times Melinda Bargreen wrote that “Sometimes an orchestra is a group of about seven or eight dozen instrumentalists. And sometimes it is a single living, breathing organism of overwhelming artistic purpose, united by the hand of a great conductor. The Mariinsky Orchestra and conductor Valery Gergiev are emphatically in that latter category.” Bargreen said that Valery Gergiev “choreographs the music by striding almost into the orchestra,” and that he “doesn't need a podium, or a baton, or even a recognizable beat” and that “It’s as if Gergiev were driving the Almighty’s new Lamborghini, accelerating like crazy, zooming around the corners, then suddenly braking to appreciate a great view.” 

The Ottawa Citizen newspaper commented that “it’s hard to imagine a finer performance of Tchaikovsky’s score” and that the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra under the baton of Valery Gergiev presented “flawless” Tchaikovsky in Ottawa. Gergiev’s “minimalist gestures clearly did the job at hand.”

In his review for The Globe and Mail, Robert Everett-Green noted that at the “never predictable” Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra’s concert at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto “history and youth collide.” “All of the well-established pieces on the Mariinsky Orchestra’s Toronto program were written by composers 30 or under.” In recent decades they have been performed often, which affects the way they are perceived and so the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra’s version encompasses their entire performance history. For example, Gergiev demonstrated how far today’s perception of Igor Stravinsky’s The Fire Bird has moved away from its ballet origins. It has long been a work in its own right, and it “was impossible to imagine a dancer putting up with some of Gergiev’s tempo fluctuations...” Dmitry Shostakovich’s First Symphony was “was polished to a fine glow by the Mariinsky’s glossy disciplined strings, its responsive winds and percussion, and by several eloquent solos on trumpet, oboe, cello and violin.” In Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 3 the reviewer also focussed on Alexander Toradze’s “eccentric, confrontational angle.”

Montreal’s The Gazette commented on the precision of the acoustics. Thanks to the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra’s rendition of the music, the article’s author Arthur Kaptainis “stopped thinking about acoustics” of the hall because “Gergiev and his charges know how to adapt to their environment.”

The Vancouver Sun published a review of the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestras Stradivarius Ensemble at the Orpheum Theatre, naming it “an exceptional event in Vancouver’s classical music calendar” and maestro Gergiev a “superstar conductor.” David Gordon Duke commented on the fact that Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings “felt like music from another universe.” Of Alexander Toradze’s interpretation of Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto under Valery Gergiev he wrote that “their vision is more manic, more intense and more outrageous, which gave the piece both greater depth and heightened shock value.”

In The Star newspaper, John Terauds commented that despite the fact that Toronto is “richly blessed with symphonic music, it is only one or two concerts each season that open the public’s eyes and ears as much as they did on this occasion.” The result was the “delight, entertainment and provocation of the audience.”

For OpusOneReview, Stanley FeffermanStanley Fefferman said that Valery Gergiev has the ability to unify different instruments in one sound with the use of “his signature trembling fingers, flying like a gorgeous kite in the sky of the audience’s imagination.”