A Rousing All-Russian Night at the Bowl
/By Truman C. Wang
8/3/2024
Last Tuesday’s all-Russian program (July 30) at the Bowl was a fiery and brilliant affair. Kevin John Edusei, a German conductor of Ghanaian descent, proved himself a strong contender in the hit parade of L.A. Philharmonic’s Dudamel-replacement candidates. (Current crowd favorite seems to be maestra Elim Chan of China.) His bio mentions championing of underrepresented composers. With two works by Aram Khachaturian on the program, Edusei certainly lived up to his reputation. The first was the 40-minute-long and somewhat meandering Violin Concerto. The L.A. Phil’s concertmaster Martin Chalifour was the violinist who managed to make the piece interesting and set a lot of its dead wood on fire (particularly in the expansive first-movement cadenza.) Being a concertmaster by profession Chalifour is not a flashy player, his playing virtuosic but unaffected, his musicianship pure and honest; the violin tone in the Sheherazade-like slow movement was silky and sensuous, and the intricate figuration in the spirited finale was handled eloquently. For his part, conductor Edusei forged the meandering narrative ahead with conviction without skimping on colorful detail (of which there were many in the interplay between mellifluous winds and soloist.)
After intermission, we heard Khachaturian’s famous ballet music from Spartacus (Suite No. 2). The ballet was written in 1956 in the Kremlin-approved style of Soviet populist realism (lots of good tunes, melodies, and a cautionary message – a Roman slave rebelling against his captors, eventually to be betrayed and killed.) In their playing, the musicians brought Khachaturian’s vivid score to full-Technicolor splendor: the sweepingly romantic strings in the famous ''Adagio of Phrygia and Spartacus'', the bursts of xylophone and percussion in the “Entrance of the Merchants”, and the wild “Dance of the Pirates”.
Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (1919 version) was a contrasting introvert work to follow the Spartacus’ uninhibited display of revelry. It is a work of seductive beauty draped in shimmering, fragrant Orientalism. Edusei’s Firebird memorably breathed the exotic perfumed air in the opening dance and the Princesses’ round dance, scared the cat in the villainous Kashchei’s “Infernal Dance”, projected a lush calm in the “Lullaby” (with limpid oboe, clarinet and bassoon) and, lastly, rejoiced rapturously in the new dawn of the final tableau.
Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.