Review: SPCO artistic partner Kopatchinskaja…
Review: SPCO artistic partner Kopatchinskaja offers inspired farewell
Patricia Kopatchinskaja (Photo: Eric Melzer)
By Rob Hubbard | Special to the Pioneer Press
Twin Cities classical music lovers are talking about the just-announced exodus of Minnesota Orchestra music director Osmo Vanska (in 2022), but I have more immediate departures on my mind. This weekend marks Patricia Kopatchinskaja's final concerts as a St. Paul Chamber Orchestra artistic partner, bringing to a close a marvelously innovative tenure that regularly expanded the boundaries of what a classical concert's expected to look like.
While many of the Moldovan violinist's predecessors in the position have exited downplaying the finality of the occasion with a kind of "Oh, I'll be back" air, Kopatchinskaja is quite directly addressing the whole concept of "goodbye" at these concerts. And, unsurprisingly for her, she takes the musical conversation in imaginative directions.
Friday's midday concert at the Ordway Concert Hall featured a touch of romantic nostalgia for this successful partnership with the help of Felix Mendelssohn, but also a sad set of musical exchanges between spouses Clara and Robert Schumann (spiced with ardent love letters) and a version of Joseph Haydn's popular "Farewell" Symphony far more serious in tone than its customarily comedic presentation. I found the entire performance quite inspiring, my admiration for this audacious artist only growing.
Four years ago, she made her debut as an SPCO artistic partner by performing a seldom-heard violin concerto Felix Mendelssohn wrote at age 13. These concerts open with something the composer penned a year later, a concerto for violin, piano and strings for which Kopatchinskaja and the orchestra are joined by Russian pianist Polina Leschenko. She and the violinist seemed remarkably simpatico – indeed, Leschenko is Kopatchinskaja's favorite recital partner – transitioning smoothly between heated exchanges and affectionate agreements, most notably on a first-movement duet cadenza. The pianist was especially impressive on the concerto's fiery finale, thunderous one moment, wistful the next.
"What does farewell mean?" Kopatchinskaja asked at the opening of the concert's second half. And it became clear that she was talking not just about saying goodbye to one relationship or one life, but life as we know it, asking the audience to consider that we may now be in the twilight of our species. Say this about this master of both the violin and concert curation: She's never been afraid to ask big questions.
There's always been a theatrical bent to Kopatchinskaja's SPCO concerts, and the second half seemed an hour-long performance piece about the nature of farewell. It opened with one of Clara Schumann's last compositions, a Romance for Violin and Piano, before Leschenko responded with one of Robert Schumann's farewells to his art, an excerpt from his "Ghost Variations." That work's theme first surfaced in the slow movement of Schumann's lone Violin Concerto, and Benjamin Britten adapted it into a weighty "Elegy" to which Kopatchinskaja brought deep sadness.
While medical notes on Robert Schumann's downward spiral into severe mental illness seemed at first out of place – quite clinical when all before them were so artistically expressed – it did return to the framing question of how we say goodbye, for it's becoming more common for those anticipating the onset of dementia to gather family and friends for farewells before the symptoms become acute. Schumann didn't have that opportunity … but he did leave music.
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The explosive opening of Haydn's stormy Symphony No. 45 was jarring, and I found myself wondering how this usually chuckle-inducing work – for which musicians depart the stage one by one during the finale – would fit with the darkness before it. But it turned out that Kopatchinskaja knew exactly what she wanted to say with the symphony, finally lending it a funereal air and bringing her SPCO partnership to a close with one last memorably arresting visual.
Who: The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and pianist Polina Leschenko
What: Works by Felix Mendelssohn, Clara and Robert Schumann, and Joseph Haydn
When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday
Where: Ordway Concert Hall, 345 Washington St., St. Paul
Tickets: $50-$12 (students and children free), available at 651-291-1144 or thespco.org
Capsule: The SPCO's most inspiring artistic partnership concludes with a fascinating confrontation with finality itself.
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