A Stately Ode to Fantasy From a Russian Institution

In the new Russia, continuity is no more prized in the performing arts than it is in government or business. The stellar musical institutions now are the likes of the Kirov Opera, reborn under a Valery Gergiev who blew in with perestroika, and the very fine Russian National Orchestra, founded in Moscow only six years ago. Meanwhile the once illustrious Bolshoi, never able to fully overthrow its balletic or operatic bureaucratic chains, makes embarrassing Page 1 news in its vain attempt to win big in Vegas by booking ballet into a casino theater.

But the State Symphony of Russia remains a glorious, if possibly unique, exception to the march of post-Soviet progress. Appearing Sunday afternoon at the Segerstrom Hall in Costa Mesa under its longtime music director, Yevgeny Svetlanov, the orchestra once more proved that it remains one of the last distinctive ensembles.

The orchestra began as the USSR State Symphony in Stalin’s day, 1936, and quickly became Moscow’s best band, if still no match for the Leningrad Philharmonic. Svetlanov, who was born in 1928 and first conducted the State Symphony 40 years ago, has been its music director since 1965, which makes him currently the longest-standing music director, by far, of a major orchestra.

Svetlanov is a deceptive conductor. He appears as if born to the stiff Soviet style of leadership. But there is a firebrand underneath. And while he has been responsible for a parade of somewhat blunt recordings of the key Russian repertory on a colorless series of Melodya releases over the years, he can surprise with furious climaxes. He has no hesitation to let individual players be genuine individuals, and he is never reserved with the percussion.

Lately, Svetlanov has been creating excitement with the first recorded Russian Mahler cycle; its ongoing release is from Harmonia Mundi on the Le Chant du Monde label. These are the wildest and most colorful Mahler performances to come out since Bernstein. So it is unfortunate that Southern California doesn’t seem to have the resources to sponsor both of the orchestra’s touring programs--the one we didn’t get was Mahler’s Ninth.

But the one we did get, an all-Tchaikovsky program, was fascinating and unhackneyed; its two major works--the Concert Fantasy and the Suite No. 3--are seldom encountered. The first, with Vladimir Ovchinikov as soloist, is a failed piano concerto; the Suite, a failed symphony. They were written back to back in 1884, have consecutive opus numbers (56 and 55, respectively), and happen to be more interesting than some of the composer’s successes.

Both are oversized. The Concert Fantasy uses a bigger orchestra, and is longer and more virtuosic than any of Tchaikovsky’s piano concertos. The four-movement suite ends with a theme-and-variations that is one of Tchaikovsky’s most ambitious symphonic movements. But what is most intriguing about these works is the way the composer attempts to break out of his own molds to build works as uninhibited, as vividly imagined and developed, as Beethoven’s.

Tchaikovsky--inspired melodist, supreme orchestrator and ever melancholic--never had the formal skills of Beethoven, and when he let himself go, as he did here, he was all over the place. The pianist steps out of the Concert Fantasy halfway into the first movement for an extended solo passage, as if the orchestra no longer were there. At the end of the Suite, an easygoing theme-and-variations movement suddenly becomes, in the last variations, an extended lopsided development.

Svetlanov, who has always been dry-eyed about Tchaikovsky, conducted both of these works as unsentimental, heroic utterances. Ovchinikov, who also appeared with Svetlanov and the orchestra at Segerstrom two years ago in Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, was again an elegant soloist with a smoothly polished technique. But he may have been just a little too reticent for an orchestra in which steely strings cut through thick textures like a knife through butter. Nor could he compete with vivid, vibrating brass or winds making the most of their reedy or breathy personalities.

For his part, Svetlanov did not look well. In the old days, he might have given us one of his podium hops--those leaps of his that are like a bear projected into flight--during the curtain-raiser, the “Marche Slav.” The conductor has slowed down and seems now to move with considerable effort. But he still can make a hair-raising sound with little motion, reminding us that appearances in Russia are often deceptive. Ferocious power still lies hidden in some of its old men.