• What: Elmar Oliveira joins the Vancouver Symphony to perform Jean Sibelius’s Violin Concerto.
• When: 3 p.m. Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday.
• Where: Skyview High School Concert Hall, 1300 N.W. 139th St., Vancouver.
• Cost: $50 for reserved seats, $35 for general admission, $30 for seniors and $10 for students.
• Information: 360-735-7278 or visit vancouversymphony.org.
Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) was trained as a violinist, but he never became a virtuoso. His claim to fame came through his compositions, including his evocative Violin Concerto, which he completed in 1903 and revised a couple of years later. It is this concerto that acclaimed violinist Elmar Oliveira will play in his debut with the Vancouver Symphony in the second concert of the orchestra’s season.
“Sibelius was a tremendous giant of a composer,” remarked Oliveira. “His Violin Concerto is very popular with violinists and audiences because it portrays so well the Scandinavian landscape. You can picture the fjords, the craggy and rugged hills and mountains, the cold and natural beauty of the country. I get those images right from the beginning of the concerto.”
• What: Elmar Oliveira joins the Vancouver Symphony to perform Jean Sibelius's Violin Concerto.
• When: 3 p.m. Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday.
• Where: Skyview High School Concert Hall, 1300 N.W. 139th St., Vancouver.
• Cost: $50 for reserved seats, $35 for general admission, $30 for seniors and $10 for students.
• Information: 360-735-7278 or visit vancouversymphony.org.
Although it took a while to become an audience favorite, Sibelius’s Violin Concerto has become one of the standards in the orchestral repertoire. One of the reasons for the slowness is that it is a very challenging piece for the soloist.
“The technical difficulties of this concerto are enormous,” acknowledged Oliveira. “It ranks with the Tchaikovsky and Brahms concertos in terms of technical obstacles and the last movement, in particular, is extremely taxing. It has double stops, up-bow staccatos, down-bow staccatos, triple stops, extremely high passages, and lots of fast passages. Plus, the concerto requires a certain kind of sound that really makes it work. The sound has to malleable because of the different tonal colors, and it has to be robust.”
Oliveira broke into the international scene after winning the Gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky International Competition in 1978. He remains the only American violinist to accomplish that feat. He was also the First Prize winner at the Naumburg International Competition (1975) and the first violinist to receive the Avery Fisher Prize (1983).
In addition to his appearances with orchestras around the world, Oliveira has 27 recordings in his discography. Soon to be released are Bernard Hoffer’s Violin Concerto with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra, Ireland and a live recording of Baroque concertos with an ensemble from Lynn University Conservatory of Music in Boca Raton, Fla., where he is artist in residence.
Also on the Vancouver Symphony program are Sergei Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony and Dimitri Shostakovich’s “Festive Overture.” Both works are very harmonic and highly engaging.
Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony has one of those really interesting background stories. Prokofiev (1891-1953) was born in tsarist Russia but, after the revolution of 1917, spent most of his working as a citizen of the Soviet Union. Because of his international reputation as a composer and pianist, Prokofiev was initially given the freedom to live abroad and return to his homeland. He even lived for several years in the United States, Germany, and France before returning to his homeland in 1933.
Soviet dictums extended into the art world, and prizes were given to music pieces that embraced the party line and pleased the Soviet leader, Josef Stalin. Suspicion was raised about Prokofiev’s trips abroad, and his passport was confiscated by the authorities in 1938 after he returned from a tour of the United States. He never got it back, and never set foot outside the Soviet Union again.
In 1948, Prokofiev’s first wife Lina was arrested (they had separated in 1941) on trumped up charges of espionage, and sent to Siberia. For the remaining five years of his life, Prokofiev would live in poverty and fear, sometimes on the verge of starvation, yet he kept writing music to the very end.
The Seventh Symphony was the last major work that Prokofiev completed. He wrote it for the Soviet Children’s Radio Division. Even though it has sweeping melodic lines, it is not a simple piece. The home key of C-sharp minor presents some harmonic challenges. There are a lot of inventive passages for all sections of the orchestra, and you’ll hear sounds of a waltz, a march, and a pastoral along the way. The piece has a bittersweet edge to it, as if the composer is looking back on a lost childhood.
During rehearsals before the work’s first performance (October 1952), the conductor suggested that Prokofiev rewrite the final measures to make them sound happier, since this could result in a first-class rather than a third-class Stalin Prize. The first-class Prize carried a 100,000 ruble reward, so Prokofiev acceded to the suggestion by including a brief, fast-paced tag at the end of the piece.
The concert will open with Shostakovich’s “Festive Overture.” This piece is one of the most fun and sparkly pieces you will ever hear. After a brief brass fanfare, things begin to race with all sorts of toe-tapping passages. If you think of Shostakovich (1906-1975) as one of those difficult composers that you would rather avoid hearing, this piece will show a completely different side of him.
The “Festive Overture” came about very quickly when Shostakovich was asked, with three days’ notice, to write something for the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra to celebrate the October revolution. Russian musicologist Lev Lebedinsky recalled sitting next to Shostakovich and watching him compose this work:
“The speed with which he wrote was truly astounding. Moreover, when he wrote light music he was able to talk, make jokes and compose simultaneously, like the legendary Mozart. He laughed and chuckled, and in the meanwhile work was under way and the music was being written down.”
Even in the version for band (which I played in college) is rousing. I can guarantee that you won’t want to miss the “Festive Overture,” especially with music director Salvador Brotons leading the orchestra. It should be a real barnburner.
