But I was really excited for Lalo’s Symphony Espagnole, a five-movement symphony with solo violin written in 1874 especially for legendary Spanish violinist Pablo de Sarasate. Edouard Lalo was French, of Spanish descent; Sarasate was Spanish, but educated in France. So the work comes across as Spanish and French at the same time. Many of the themes are inspired by Spanish and Spanish-influenced dance rhythms, such as the habanera and the danzón, a Cuban dance mixing both Spanish and French influences.
The Symphony Espagnole is an excellent test of a violinist; to play it, you need both perfect technical skill and a sense of dance, almost an ability to dance and play at the same time. I'm a violinist myself (though my own playing has lately fallen prey to a near-lethal combination of rheumatic disease and perfectionism), so I attend all PSO performances of pieces I know with a special edge-of-the-seat, moving-my-fingers-along-with the soloist intensity. The PSO's concertmaster, Andrés Cárdenes, is playing the Lalo all weekend. Although Cárdenes is an excellent concertmaster, I have never been too impressed by him as a soloist. But I really love this piece and I allowed myself to hope.
Cárdenes sort of struggled through the first four movements, dropping a few notes and runs, and not really getting the swing of the piece. But then, in the middle of the final movement, something happened. The thing a violinist fears most aside from sitting on one's violin and crushing it: Cárdenes got lost. Completely lost—not just a bit of a flub, where you drop a run and pick up the flow again in a few bars, no. He just stood there, while the orchestra went on, for maybe 20 seconds, until the conductor, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, stopped the orchestra and they began the movement from the top.
The violinists in the audience were visibly cringing; the woman next to me, who I noticed had been moving her fingers along with the piece, had her head in her hands. back when I was performing, even seeing something like this was like getting the evil eye—very bad luck. The worst part for Cárdenas is that he needs to play the piece twice more this weekend. I felt ill.
After the re-start, he sort of barely muddled through it. The audience was great, giving him a standing ovation. Almost everyone, including Cárdenes himself, appeared to laugh the whole ugly thing off. The woman next to me, however, refused to stand. She told me that he ruined her favorite last movement of any piece she knew.
In order to cleanse my soul and shake the bad luck, I came home and googled up a 2002 performance by Vadim Repin with David Robertson and the Orchestre National de Lyon. In 2002, Repin was playing the 1708 “Ruby” Stradivarius violin, which was once owned by none other than Pablo de Sarasate himself (if you’re wondering how violinists manage to get their talented hands on these rare instruments, Repin had the Ruby on loan from the Stradivarius Society; many artists do this).
If the experience of seeing the first movement of the Symphony Espagnole played by a master on Sarasate's own violin does not give you heart palpitations, then please check your pulse, because you may actually be dead!
To see the fateful final movement as it was meant to be played, please find below the fold Romanian violinist Silvia Marcovici with C. Mandeal and the Bucharest philharmonic. Pardon the orchestra; they are a bit plodding compared to Marcovici's fire and sense of danzón, which are brilliant here:
While we’re on the subject of amazing violinists playing Spanish music on Strads, here is the astounding Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos playing Francisco Tárrega’s classic Spanish guitar piece Recuerdos de la Alhambra, arranged for violin by Ruggiero Ricci. Kavakos plays the 1692 Falmouth Stradivarius. The Falmouth is one of Stadivari’s “long-pattern” instruments, which are slightly longer, narrower, and known for their “dark” sound quality. I love dark sound quality!
Sorry that last video is just a still shot. If you are dying to see Kavakos’ mad bowing skills on this piece, there’s another YouTube of it here, but the sound is not as good.
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