Simon Trpčeski has phenomenal technique, good taste and inspiring imagination. He also champions his small country
Snug in the middle of the Balkans, Macedonia has given the world Alexander the Great, Mother Teresa and a term for that most delightful invention, the fruit salad. Honourable and tasty achievements all, though for music lovers today the chief Macedonian export is definitely Simon Trpčeski. It is not simply that this pianist’s blend of phenomenal technique, good taste and inspiring imagination wins him this eminence. It’s also his gusto for championing his small, plucky country and furthering its cultural renaissance.
Without Trpčeski’s involvement, the foreign excursions of an ensemble like the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra would be unlikely to reach Skopje, the capital city but still some way off the beaten track. When they performed an all-Russian prorgamme with Trpčeski on Saturday — the night of the European Song Contest too — two and a half thousand eager people filled the Metropolis Arena, the kind of utilitarian modern space more set up for boxing matches than eight rounds of classical music.
No gilt. No plush velvet. No curving balconies. This was certainly not the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Yet as soon as the orchestra and their music director Alexander Vedernikov launched into Tchaikovskys Hamlet overture, the national timbres asserted themselves: resinous strings, earthy woodwinds, brass with an almost malevolent power. The Arena’s dry, unadorned acoustic gave the orchestra no place to hide — not that they had any reason to in this impassioned, well-argued performance.
Then the piano was wheeled on for a glittering and playful account of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Some pianists of renown play as if the piano is either their adversary or the partner they’ve stopped loving. But as Trpčeski’s hands frisked over the keys so lightly, so unaffectedly, you knew immediately that the piano was his home, his best and most faithful friend. Rachmaninov’s kaleidoscopic variations gave him a chance for every variety of tone and attack, from puckish flourish through bell-like chant to a thundering Dies Irae. With Vedernikov’s orchestra in perfect step, Trp?eski switched between moods without any shadow of the mechanical. All was natural ebullience and fun.
Come the second half and Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, some of the Bolshoi Orchestra’s patina started to fade a little. There were reasons, chiefly the Arena’s heat, exacerbated by the industrial blast of the platform’s lighting. Rough edges crept over some of the string playing and the score’s climactic gestures needed a fraction more force to match the composer’s rhetoric and Vedernikov’s far-flung arms. Yet nothing affected the mastery of Prokofiev’s sinuous lyrical line, the vim of the second movement’s toccata or the slow movement’s darkening nostalgia.
Plenty of vim among the encores too, launched in foot-tapping style with the stomping dance of In Struga by the contemporary Macedonian Pande Sahov — a piano piece dressed on Saturday in French-flavoured orchestral finery. With luck, in three years’ time Skopje will be able to house classical concerts like this in its first custom-built concert hall. I’m sure Alexander the Great would approve.
Source.
Snug in the middle of the Balkans, Macedonia has given the world Alexander the Great, Mother Teresa and a term for that most delightful invention, the fruit salad. Honourable and tasty achievements all, though for music lovers today the chief Macedonian export is definitely Simon Trpčeski. It is not simply that this pianist’s blend of phenomenal technique, good taste and inspiring imagination wins him this eminence. It’s also his gusto for championing his small, plucky country and furthering its cultural renaissance.
Without Trpčeski’s involvement, the foreign excursions of an ensemble like the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra would be unlikely to reach Skopje, the capital city but still some way off the beaten track. When they performed an all-Russian prorgamme with Trpčeski on Saturday — the night of the European Song Contest too — two and a half thousand eager people filled the Metropolis Arena, the kind of utilitarian modern space more set up for boxing matches than eight rounds of classical music.
No gilt. No plush velvet. No curving balconies. This was certainly not the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Yet as soon as the orchestra and their music director Alexander Vedernikov launched into Tchaikovskys Hamlet overture, the national timbres asserted themselves: resinous strings, earthy woodwinds, brass with an almost malevolent power. The Arena’s dry, unadorned acoustic gave the orchestra no place to hide — not that they had any reason to in this impassioned, well-argued performance.
Then the piano was wheeled on for a glittering and playful account of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Some pianists of renown play as if the piano is either their adversary or the partner they’ve stopped loving. But as Trpčeski’s hands frisked over the keys so lightly, so unaffectedly, you knew immediately that the piano was his home, his best and most faithful friend. Rachmaninov’s kaleidoscopic variations gave him a chance for every variety of tone and attack, from puckish flourish through bell-like chant to a thundering Dies Irae. With Vedernikov’s orchestra in perfect step, Trp?eski switched between moods without any shadow of the mechanical. All was natural ebullience and fun.
Come the second half and Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, some of the Bolshoi Orchestra’s patina started to fade a little. There were reasons, chiefly the Arena’s heat, exacerbated by the industrial blast of the platform’s lighting. Rough edges crept over some of the string playing and the score’s climactic gestures needed a fraction more force to match the composer’s rhetoric and Vedernikov’s far-flung arms. Yet nothing affected the mastery of Prokofiev’s sinuous lyrical line, the vim of the second movement’s toccata or the slow movement’s darkening nostalgia.
Plenty of vim among the encores too, launched in foot-tapping style with the stomping dance of In Struga by the contemporary Macedonian Pande Sahov — a piano piece dressed on Saturday in French-flavoured orchestral finery. With luck, in three years’ time Skopje will be able to house classical concerts like this in its first custom-built concert hall. I’m sure Alexander the Great would approve.
Source.
Simon Trpčeski and the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra at the Metropolis Arena, Skopje
Geoff BROWN, The Times, May 17 2009
