Concert Review: ‘Tchaikovsky Festival Part 1'
Sheng Cai Joins the Buffalo Philharmonic
The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2025-26 Tchaikovsky Festival began on Friday Feburary 7, 2025 with a Coffee Concert at Kleinhans Music Hall featuring Canadian pianist Sheng Cai performing the great Russian’s Second Piano Concerto.
JoAnne Falletta also led the BPO in “Capriccio Italien,” as well as Stravinsky’s balletic homage to Tchaikosky, “The Fairy’s Kiss.”
The performance repeats tonight, Saturday, February 8, 2025 at 7:30PM at Kleinhans Music Hall.
Piano Concerto in G major, No. 2
Nikolai Rubinstein was a pianist, institution builder, and a key figure (along with “The Five”) in bringing western classical music to Russia in the 19th Century. Tchaikovsky was a good friend but they had a falling out in 1874 following Rubinstein’s harsh criticism of his first piano concerto, calling it “badly written,” “vulgar” and insisting there were “only two or three pages worth preserving.”
They worked it out and Rubenstein was all set to premiere Piano Concerto No. 2, but he passed away before he could perform it. The premiere took place in November 1881, not in Russia but rather New York City with the New York Philharmonic.
A graduate of Juilliard and the Royal College of Music in Toronto, Canadian pianist Sheng Cai is a model of the itinerant virtuoso, dazzling audiences all over world with his keyboard pyrotechnics.
The Second Piano Concerto is a dialogue between piano and orchestra, rarely playing together. Cai performed the complex work by memory, flawlessly playing the lightning-fast, knuckle-busting cadenzas while articulating every note.
Cai, along with Concertmaster Nikki Chooi and Principal Cellist Roman Mekinulov, beautifully rendered the trio section of the slow second movement and its violin and cello solos.
A dazzling final movement built to a triumphant finale, bringing the small but enthusiastic crowd to its feet for an extended ovation. Cai declined an encore.
You can hear Cai in a June 2023 performance of Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 2 with the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra here.
Stravinsky’s Divertimento From The Fairy’s Kiss
As JoAnne Falletta explained to the audience, when Stravinsky was asked to honor the greatest Russian composer on the 35th anniversary of his death, he composed a ballet based on a fairy tale as Tchaikovsky famously did in “Sleeping Beauty,” “Swan Lake,” and “The Nutcracker.”
Stravinsky chose “The Fairy’s Kiss” (a.k.a “The Ice Maiden”), the tragic tale of a child marked at birth to live a charmed life destined to end after 20 years, when he was to be taken to the netherworld by a covetous fairy.
Falletta suggested Stravinsky may have intentionally chosen this story because, despite his prodigious talents, Tchaikovsky struggled with depression his whole life.
The BPO gave a thoughtful performance, with a lovely and moving clarinet trio interlude. You can watch the young man vainly try to free himself from the fairy’s magic before being transported to a “land beyond time and place” in a staging of the tragic, final “pas de deux” movement, above.
Capriccio Italien, Op. 45
The “Reggimento Corazzieri” was created in the 16th Century and for 500 years it has resided in Rome and acted as the Honor Guard for the dukes, kings, and since 1946, the President of the Italian Republic.
Its barracks (above) is part of the monastic complex adjacent to the Church of Santa Susanna originally built as a convent of Cistercian nuns founded on the site in 1587, and who remain to this day.
The Regiment’s day begins with a bugle call Tchaikovsky heard every morning during his 1880 visit to Rome and incorporated into the musical opening. Tchaikovsky explained in a letter that “Capriccio Italien” was consciously modeled after (fellow “Russian Five”) Mikhail Glinka’s “Spanish Overtures.”
The short orchestral composition chronicles a day in the life of the Eternal City, from the opening trumpet fanfare majestically rendered by the trumpet section to a Carnevale parade.
The BPO has developed a distinct orchestral personality, as a whole as well as in its sections. The strings, woodwinds, and brass have formed their own ensemble voices, adding depth and nuance.
The quality of the BPO’s performances are routinely high and currently represent the pinnacle of artistic expression in our region.
JoAnn Falletta and The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra will repeat this performance at Kleinhans Music Hall on Saturday, February 8, 2025, at 7:30PM.
The 2025-26 Tchaikovsky Festival concludes February 17-18 with performances of the “Suite from Sleeping Beauty,” “Variations of a Rococo Theme for Cello and Orchestra” featuring cellist Marcin Zdunik, and “Symphony No. 6, Opus 74.”
Tickets and more information can be found here.