Symphony Secures Substitute Virtuoso
Musical performers have a recurring nightmare: They are about to go on stage only to discover they’ve never even heard of the composition they are supposed to perform. Symphony managers and conductors have a similar bad dream: Their scheduled soloist is too ill to perform.
That nightmare struck home Tuesday when symphony music director Fabio Mechetti and executive director Jonathan Martin learned that Horacio Gutierrez, scheduled to play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the orchestra Friday, was sick with the flu and had a 102-degree temperature.
Mechetti decided that it was important to keep the concert program intact. It became as case of “Needed now: virtuoso pianist who can play Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto on short notice. Fee negotiable.”
Mechetti and Martin spent some time compiling a short list of desirable substitutes and then got on the phone with managers testing these artists’ availability. “We made a list of 30 or 40 names,” Martin says. “Then we prioritized those. Vladimir Feltsman was one of those in our first range of priorities.”
Feltsman last performed in Spokane in March 1991, playing a rousingly virtuoso performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 under the baton of Bruce Ferden.
Feltsman grew up in Russia, where his father was a well-known composer of popular music. He began studying the piano with his mother when he was 6, then entered the Moscow Central Music School. When he was 12, Feltsman made his orchestral debut as a soloist with the Moscow Philharmonic.
After winning first prizes in the Prague Competition and the Margurite Long Competition in Paris, Feltsman began an increasingly active international career with tours of western Europe and Japan. But his career ground to a halt in 1979 when he applied for a visa to emigrate to Israel. Soviet authorities denied him permission to emigrate and suddenly Feltsman found himself allowed to give concerts only in the remotest towns and villages in the Soviet Union.
Hearing of the pianist’s plight, U.S. Ambassador Arthur A. Hartman invited Feltsman to perform recitals at his residence in Moscow. One of those recitals was recorded and released in the United States. Afterward, Feltsman’s case became a serious international embarrassment to the Soviet government, and he was allowed to give his first public recital in Moscow in nearly a decade in April 1987.
Given permission to emigrate, Feltsman came to the United States and made his widely acclaimed Carnegie Hall debut on Nov. 11, 1987. His resumed career has resulted in appearances with the great orchestras and on leading recital series in Europe and America. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Feltsman has returned to Russia to play and conduct.
In addition to his orchestral and recital engagements, Feltsman records for the Music Masters label. He teaches at the State University of New York at New Paltz and heads the university’s summer institute for advanced piano study.
The works Mechetti has chosen to complement the Beethoven concerto include “The Russian Easter Overture,” Rimsky-Korsakov’s brilliant orchestral showpiece, and two dance-inspired works, Kodaly’s “Dances of Galanta” and Stravinsky’s ballet “Jeu de cartes” (The Card Game).
Kodaly, asked to write a work celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Budapest Philharmonic in 1933, chose a group of folk dances from the Hungarian market town of Galanta. It was in Galanta that Kodaly, when he was 7 years old, had heard his first “orchestra,” a famous Gypsy band that entertained those who stopped on the route between Vienna and Budapest.
Stravinsky’s inspiration for “Jeu de cartes” was poker, a favorite game of his. When George Balanchine asked Stravinsky in 1935 to write a ballet for the newly formed American Ballet Company, the composer took the idea of having the ballet describe a poker game “in three hands.” In the ballet, the obnoxious Joker (shades of “Superman”) is defeated by a royal flush of Hearts.
Kendall Feeney, Eastern Washington University music professor and director of the Zephyr concert series, will discuss the music on Friday’s program at 7 p.m. in the Opera House auditorium as part of the Gladys Brooks Pre-Concert Talks series.
, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Concert The Spokane Symphony and guest artist Vladimir Feltsman will perform Friday at 8 p.m. at the Spokane Opera House. Tickets are $13.50 to $28.50, available at the symphony ticket office (624-1200), G&B Select-a-Seat outlets or call (800) 325-SEAT.