Vancouver Symphony to go Romantic with Tchaikovsky and anti-Romantic with Stravinsky in season finale

Olga Kern | Photo by Chris Lee

Two famous yet contrasting pieces will crown the end of the Vancouver Symphony’ 46th season this weekend at the Skyview Concert Hall (May 31 and June 1). On the familiar and comfortable side of the ledger is Tchaikovsky/s Piano Concert No 1 with guest artist Olga Kern commanding the Steinway. On the familiar but uncomfortable side is Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.” By juxtaposing these two pieces on the same program, listeners will be able to enjoy two iconic works that are mainstays of the orchestral repertoire.

This concert marks a return engagement for Kern, who wowed an overflow audience last summer at the Vancouver Arts and Music Festival with a scintillating rendition of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. With Kern at the keyboard, Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, one of the most popular concertos ever written, is guaranteed to receive a thrilling performance that listeners will be able to recall to their grandchildren years later.

Kern won the Eleventh Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2001 and remains the only woman in the last 50 years to accomplish that feat. As a result, she appears in three documentaries: The Cliburn: Playing on the Edge (2001), Olga’s Journey (2003), and They Came to Play (2008).

Kern’s sterling artistry has been heard in concert halls around the world and on numerous recordings. Originally from Russia, she became an American citizen in 2016 and lives in New York City where she is a faculty member at the Manhattan School of Music. In 2016, she also started the Olga Kern International Piano Competition, which takes place every three years in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Although Kern has played the Tchaikovsky countless times, she, like other great artists, always finds a way to make the piece sound fresh. Her virtuosic technique is of the highest caliber, and through her love of music she has a terrific way of communicating with the audience.

After intermission the Vancouver Symphony will play an equally famous piece, Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” which was written for a ballet but caused a riot when it was first performed in 1913 in Paris. Audiences, especially ballet audiences were not prepared to see and hear the unusual style of dance that Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe did, and were gob smacked by the unruly, raw, and turbulent music. Together the music and dance served to tell the story of a pagan tribe’s ritual for spring in which a girl is chosen to be sacrificed by dancing herself to death.

Although the premiere got way out of hand with patrons shouting and trying to disrupt the performance, the “Rite of Spring” has gone one to become one of the great pieces in the orchestral. Vancouver Symphony’s Music Director, Salvador Brotons, knows that it is serious challenge to perform.

“The Rite of Spring is still one of the most difficult pieces to conduct and to put together for orchestras all over the world,” wrote Salvador Brotons via email. “It is a spectacular piece, and it works perfectly without the ballet scenes. The main challenges are the continuous metric changes. We all need to be exact almost like robots. The orchestra has to come to understanding the rhythms individually.”

“It will be my first time conducting this piece,” added Brotons. “I did study it in my student years, and also I did play it as a flute player in the orchestra. I need to conduct it very clearly and with great rhythmic accuracy. It requires a huge orchestra with a big wind section, eight horns, five trumpets, and lots of percussion.”

“’The Rite of Spring’ is a big, big challenge for the orchestra,” concluded Brotons “We are ready to tackle it, but it requires extreme concentration from everybody in the orchestra. While the Tchaikovsky is a well-loved piece in the Romantic style, the Stravinsky is an anti-Romantic piece. It has a lot of impact, and I hope that people will like it.”