On October 18th and 20th, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra will debut a program of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin, and Sibelius’s Symphony No. 4. With 24-year old Israeli piano virtuoso Tom Borrow and Finnish conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste at the helm, this will be a concert to remember.
Tom Borrow and Jukka-Pekka Saraste to Perform Ravel, Bartók, and Sibelius at Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
Borrow became an overnight sensation in the classical music world in 2019. He replaced another pianist, with only 36 hours notice, to perform Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major with the Israel Philharmonic. This perhaps stressful debut did not keep the concerto from becoming a signature piece for him. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra told TABLE that “It’s fitting that such a young pianist has found success with Ravel’s music. Ravel himself was often called a ‘dandy’ and had an obsession with seeming youthful.” They also described the Piano Concerto in G as having a “boyish exuberance” that Borrow brings out in it.
And Borrow is serious about his Ravel. In a 2022 interview with the national branch of the Jewish Chronicle he said, “Actually just reading a novel can in some way help my Ravel. The learning continues at a subconscious level. I can become very obsessive when I’m working on a piece, trying to crack those nuts that composers have left us.”
A History of Controversy in Classical Music
The concert, however, goes beyond Ravel. Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin was hugely controversial at its debut. It tells the story of a young girl luring and robbing unsuspecting men on the street. The themes of sex, murder, and criminality scandalized censors in Cologne in the 1920s. “The authorities stopped the production after the first show. The Miraculous Mandarin wasn’t performed again until 1951, years after Bartók’s death,” Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s communications team explained. The harsh tones of each movement and the vigorous, percussive score convey the violence and wildness of the seductions in the story.
Sibelius’s Symphony No. 4, also part of this evening of extreme emotions, is “one of Sibelius’s coldest works,” Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra said. Conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste, like Sibelius himself, is Finnish and serves as Chief Director of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. Saraste also received the prestigious Sibelius Prize in Norway for his work.
In an interview with Sibelius One, Saraste listed the Fourth Symphony, which he will be performing in Pittsburgh, as the piece that most influenced his work. “I think contact with some interpretations, for example Paavo Berglund, reinforced my interest. The way he was conducting made me convinced that there’s an incredible truth in the music,” he told said.
A Cohesive Vision for the Performance
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra chose to put these three works together because they all respond to a changing political and social landscape at the turn of the twentieth century. This feeling is not unlike the tumultuous time we live in today. In the piano concerto, Ravel drew from fellow turn of the century musician and contemporary George Gershwin’s jazz sensibilities.
The two composers met in Paris and admired each other, despite being on two ends of the musical spectrum. “A jazzy impulse collides with French impressionistic harmonies to create this singular music,” Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra told TABLE. A slapstick sensibility and a jazzy melancholy at the start of the concerto give it some of that character of metropolitan Parisian life. At that time, many American expatriates had begun to influence the city’s culture.
Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin is a “Modernist firebrand” that pushed boundaries, as did Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring (which famously incited riots). Its aggressive score reflects the changing attitudes and existential anger in the wake of World War I. Cultural norms were changing as the world was coming out of both that war and the 1912 Spanish Flu Pandemic. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
“Among these composers’ common reactions to a new century and new cultural landscapes was to draw from traditions to create something genuinely new. They tried to find their particular voice,” Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra told TABLE. In a way, performing these turn of the century works now encourages us all to do the same.
Story by Emma Riva / Photo courtesy of Tom Borrow
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