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The Las Vegas Philharmonic opened its sixth season in living color with picturesque works by Wagner and Mussorgsky as well as Tchaikovsky’s rule-breaking Piano Concerto No. 1. The hugely successful Philharmonic has its audiences breaking rules, too: applauding wildly between movements, giving standing ovations after every single show. What we lack in the niceties of orchestral etiquette we make up in enthusiasm. That’s fine with me — a stuffier audience wouldn’t have sung the National Anthem so exuberantly anyway.
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Richard Wagner
(1813-1883)
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Have you seen the bumper sticker that reads, “Sit down, shut up, and hang on”? We did just that for the first piece on tonight’s program. The overture from Wagner’s opera The Flying Dutchman is musical imagery at its finest, depicting a storm-tossed sailing ship with terrifying vividness. Richard Wagner based his opera on the legend of the Flying Dutchman, a sea captain who sells his soul in return for safe passage around Cape Horn. (Ever seen the weather down there? You’d make a deal with the Devil, too.) I might have gotten seasick if not for a melancholy interlude portraying the captain’s walking on a lonely beach. In the story, his punishment is eternal banishment from mankind. Occasionally he can venture ashore to search for the one thing that will save him from his exile. Failing each time, he returns despairingly to his ship. He can be redeemed from his fate only by finding a mysterious woman who appears lovingly before him as if in a dream.
Good luck, buddy.
Modest Mussorgsky
(1839-1881)
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Pictures At An Exhibition was composed by Modest Mussorgsky as a tribute to a departed friend. The piece is a collection of many short movements describing the friend’s artworks. The music begins with a stately Promenade, setting a theme that returns frequently to represent the viewer’s strolling from one painting to the next. Mussorgsky wrote the work for piano, but it is Maurice Ravel’s lush orchestral arrangement that later popularized it.
The first musical painting is of a nutcracker doll, which is portrayed lumbering about heavily, with an occasional percussive cracking of a nut. A serene string promenade leads into a beautiful bassoon introduction to “The Olde Castle,” whose somber melody is then carried by, of all instruments, an alto saxophone. Redemption is mine! When I first met conductor Harold Weller, I mentioned that I had played the sax, and he answered with two words: “My condolences.” What say ye now, Maestro?
Other movements portray children in a garden, slow-moving oxen, newly hatched chicks dancing among the eggshells, two old Polish men, a bustling marketplace, and the dark Roman Catacombs. Toward the end, “The Hut on Fowl’s Legs” recalls a Russian folk tale about a witch whose flying hut is her transportation, leaping into the air on giant chicken’s legs. The demonic sound is perfect for scaring the bejeezus out of young trick-or-treaters at Halloween. Finally, “The Great Gate of Kiev” depicts a sketch the painter created for a proposed city gate that was never built. The grandiose finale reprises the original promenade theme and blows your hair back with its brass chords. Intermission surely gave the orchestra a badly needed rest.
Just as the constellation Orion returns to the night sky each autumn, piano whiz-kid Orion Weiss returned after taking Las Vegas by storm last year as a guest of the Philharmonic. Tonight he performed Peter Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B Flat Minor. Tchaikovsky broke with some traditional conventions in this piece, and the famed Russian pianist to whom it was dedicated immediately pooh-poohed its unusual form. Tchaikovsky, instead of altering the concerto, promptly dedicated it to another pianist. Way to go, Peter.
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Peter Tchaikovsky
(1840-1893)
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The wide range of tempos and moods within each of the concerto’s three movements made their nomenclature (allegro, andante, etc.) largely irrelevant for me. The first movement opens powerfully with the brass section but immediately shifts into a gushingly romantic string melody. Orion entered as an accompanist rather than as a soloist but soon established the piano’s presence with heavy octaves played over the orchestra’s sweeping backdrop. The mostly serene second movement contained some very lively sections, and the final movement, a rondo, alternated among pretty melodies, intense piano solo cadenzas, and an energetic Cossack dance. (You’ve heard the Cossack Dance from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, right? I suspect the people of Khazakstan like their coffee strong.) Some of the piano solos were almost more fun to watch than to hear, and Orion had blindingly fast hands. Don’t let your daughter go out with this guy. At the end, a flowing Rachmaninoff-like melody grew into an unmistakable Tchaikovsky ending, with epileptically fast punctuation by Orion. I lost count of the ovations afterward.
 The music season is open, and there’s more great artistry to come. Click here for the Philharmonic’s schedule of performances, or check out your own city’s orchestra. If you weren’t an art lover before, this kind of music might change your mind. If not – well, my condolences.
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By Robert LaGrone, Las Vegas Jetsetters Magazine Entertainment Editor.
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