A dazzling Khachaturian from Yatco,Colmenar and MPO

Most people would know the Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian for just one composition, the Sabre Dance from his Soviet ballet Gayaneh. The frenetic pace of the piece’s percussive melody makes it one of the most aggressive piece of music ever written.

But very few people know that Khachaturian gained his international popularity from two famous concertos, one for the piano and another for the violin. Both are highly virtuosic in nature, especially written for Russian artists. The Piano Concerto, written for the pianist Lev Oborin, became one of the signature pieces of the American pianist William Kapell. On the other hand, the Violin Concerto was written specifically for that titan of violin playing, David Oistrakh.

Oistrakh’s legendary recording of the Khachaturian Violin Concerto, with the composer himself conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, is a collector’s item. The recording was available briefly under EMI Record’s "Composers in Person" series.

To hear Oistrakh perform this piece is to be an ear-witness to one of the most fiendishly written pieces for the violin. The Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto gives violin virtuosos the opportunity to plumb the depths of emotion, while the Beethoven Violin Concerto allows them to show their maturity and wisdom. Most concertos focus on dazzling violin playing, giving the performer an opportunity to show his wizardry with both. The Khachaturian is one of the few concertos that combine both emotion and spectacle in one piece.

Of course, Oistrakh was one of the leading violinists during the Cold War. His reputation is only rivaled by older virtuosos, namely Nathan Milstein, Jascha Heifetz and the young Yehudi Menuhin, who all gained their reputations before the Second World War. Oistrakh’s closest rival would have been the American Isaac Stern; but to many violin aficionados, there was only one Oistrakh.

Thus, it was a surprise to hear Maestro Oscar Yatco, the conductor laureate of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, tackling Khachaturian’s concerto. Its demands on any violinist are absolute; one would need to balance the piece’s virtuosic demands with its emotional content. And after you’ve heard Oistrakh’s version, it is difficult to erase his example from your mind.

Yatco’s Khachaturian might have sounded rather broad in tempo in the opening movement, but the steady flow of repeating melody – more like a hiccupping, one of Khachaturian’s signature musical technique – hit the mark. Hearing the music on record and seeing it performed live are two different things. The sight of a violinist bowing his violin live provides a steadying visual counterpart to the difficult sounds you hear on record. And surprise! What sounded like difficult music, Yatco managed to toss off with aplomb.

The romantic second movement, again with Khachaturian’s signature hiccups, is a relaxing oasis to the concerto’s vibrant outer movements. It is sensitive and touching, and Yatco squeezed it of emotion. The music isn’t saccharine or overly romantic as one would expect from, say, the Tchaikovsky concerto. It is a testament to Khachaturian’s powers as composer that he was able to achieve a sensitive balance in the movements to this concerto.

The finale once again calls on the violinist’s deft fingers to manipulate its tortuous demands. The violin and orchestra are pitted against each other, with the violinist leading the rhythmic melody from the ensemble. Yatco knew how to pull the orchestra with him, a tribute to his years as one of the country’s best conductors. In the end, he rewarded his audience with his dizzying talent as a violinist, a side people rarely saw in all his years with the PPO. At the end of the concerto, it wasn’t surprising that the audience showered him with generous applause.

As an encore, Yatco performed the Adagio from one of Bach’s solo violin partitas. It is easy to romanticize Bach’s music. However, the Maestro used the music as a display of his serious side, one that is concerned with pure music making. That is the test of any violinist worth his salt.

Throughout the Khachaturian concerto, conductor Rodel Colmenar and the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra play as one with Yatco, unfazed by the difficult demands of the music. Colmenar still has to find the perfect balance for the orchestra within the Philamlife Theater’s reverberant expanse. Seated seven rows from the front of the stage, the sound was truly thunderous in tutti, with sectional detail dissolving into a wash of sonorous sound. In quieter moments, detail is pure and clear, especially the playing of flute principal Tony Maigue.

In the romantic Dvorak Symphony No. 8 in D-minor, the MPO showed its capacities as an orchestra. Colmenar was responsive to the differing textures to the variations in the finale, as well as in the waltz-style third movement. However, he still has to arrive at a seamless succession of musical ideas within movements. Sometimes the whole was compromised by a tendency to making each musical idea episodic in character. Musical ideas did not flow smoothly within movements. But this is a minor cavil, something the orchestra will eventually master as it masters the repertoire it sets to possess.

Indeed, blessed with a warm generous sound, the MPO only has to arrive at a distinct personality to distinguish it from orchestras in the country.