Fairbanks Symphony Season Opener 2023
By MFC Feeley
Rachmaninoff
Piano Concerto #2 in C Minor, Opus 18
Successful art transports you to a waking dream state (without the risks and hangovers of other hallucinogens). The Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra succeeds so well at this transportation that it would take an artist more talented than I to describe it, but I’ll try.
The 2023 Season opened with a glossy black piano center stage. As I settled into a full house buzzing with an impressive mix of old and young attendees, guest soloist, Zhenni Li-Cohen, crossed the stage in a long off-the-shoulder red velvet dress, shook hands with the first and second violinists, and sat at the piano, bending her head toward the keys as if she were alone in the world. Throughout this performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto #2 in C Minor, Opus 18, she played as if she were a lonely moon alternately sharing her heartache with a distant universe and taking comfort in the admiration of the ocean.
Embodying the power of a deceptively calm sea, Music Director Eduard Zilberkant conducted the orchestra as a lovesick Poseidon, directing individual waves and instruments to respectfully court and echo the piano even as the tide of the full orchestra succumbed to the moon’s irresistible pull. Throughout the first movement, I watched Li-Cohen glance at Zilberkant as he listened intently to her half of the musical dialog. There was no sense of superiority from either; the ocean and the moon seemed perfectly mated in a balanced trio with Rachmaninoff.
Abruptly, the woman seated to my right asked me a question and I lost the thread of this unspooling fantasy… but interruptions are part of the shared experience of live music, and while I don’t know what dream her mind was weaving, we were friends by intermission.
When my attention returned, Zilberkant was putting one hand over his mouth to quiet the musicians while his other hand rose, at once gentling and encouraging the libidinous swell of orchestration that swirled around the piano.
Following the first movement’s passion, flutist Dorli McWayn serenaded the piano with the piercing emotional vulnerability of an uncertain morning after. Do you love me? Li-Cohen bent to the piano, musing on the moon's loneliness. Can one voice (Ours? The flute’s?) ever placate the moon? A second flute, I believe it was Bobbi Janiro, played the heartbreaking, doubtful, answer. Collectively, the lovesick and lonely instruments hummed agreement. Each wave was in love with the moon, and so was the ocean as a whole.
To our thrill and relief, Li-Cohen expressed the moon’s rising ecstasy through several long solos. Getting excited she even jumped in her seat as she played. Zilberkant began jumping too, until the audience jumped in a standing ovation
After this, Li-Cohen played an incomparable version of Gershwin’s “The Man I Love,” filled with yearning and supported by what sounded like a flourish of springs yet was solely piano and played entirely and only with a single hand.
Then, someone brought in a second piano bench. The two benches were placed side by side, perpendicular to the keyboard and Zilberkant sat next to Li-Cohen. They played Brahms’ Hungarian Dance for Four Hands together like two (extremely talented) toddlers laughing in a musical sandbox. From the clavicle down they moved differently, but their shoulders and their heads bobbed in unison. Their physical joy was infectious. I only wish we had all been dancing—to think I usually find Brahms boring!
Whew. Intermission.
Shostakovich
Symphony #5, Opus 47
Now the piano sat so far stage left that pianist Evelina Savonin was barely on stage and looked banished. This may have been unavoidable, but I hope she knows that while Li-Cohen was certainly a tough act to follow, the audience loved her, too.
This piece rendered an urbanized landscape. The violins conjured dawn gleaming off polished smokestacks. I heard something heavy lumber through the soot and gravel. The flutes suggested the awakening of birds and scuttling creatures. The wind instruments pulsed approaching footsteps. The full orchestra roared with the demands of the impending day: bosses, deadlines, clients, bills, and a crash of cymbals. The drums beat and we—the audience of frantic workers—could not keep up without surrendering to the music and the pace of a world determined to move forward with or without us.
Then a respite. Lunch? A walk home? A picnic by the river? The xylophone played dreams and exhaustion.
The cellos entered as one voice. Various winds joined. We found ourselves strolling through the city singing with industry, conversation, and trade. Then the first violin—a stray individual, a traveler?—and the flute—a butterfly?—flitted through the machinery. An argument played out between joy and obligation. In a swell of harmony, the city absorbed all who comprised it.
Here, despite my best efforts, I got so carried away that I could not take notes, so I cannot tell you what happened next, but when I snapped back into the concert hall, the orchestra was in a full romantic swoon. Something chimed urgently. The cellos amplified the message, and the night’s aching beauty pricked starlight into our existential resignation. Then out of nowhere: kettledrums!
Revolution? A fire? A morning alarm? An acoustic firework finale banged: challenge accepted, we—the audience, the orchestra, and Shastokovitch—live to fight another day!
The audience, exhausted, staggered slowly to their feet. Once risen, we clapped for several minutes.
Do not miss the next performance.