It sometimes seems crass to talk of a direct link between the music of a particular country and the characteristics of its national performance traditions. But throughout the Kirov Orchestra and Valery Gergiev's concert, it was impossible even to consider that Prokofiev, Mussorgsky, Liadov and Tchaikovsky could have written their music with any other orchestral sound in mind.
The Kirov's ensemble is full of bold contrasts between a voluminous brass sound, reedy, rough-edged woodwinds and vigorously forthright strings. Its collective sound matches precisely the broad brushstrokes of music like Prokofiev's ballet Le Pas d'Acier. A partly propagandist vision of the ceaseless industry of post-revolutionary Russia, Prokofiev's music originally accompanied choreography of parading commissars and citizens, and the activity of Russian factories. His orchestration is similarly utilitarian, with instruments assigned single, repetitive tasks.
Chout (The Buffoon), another of Prokofiev's ballet scores written for Diaghilev, tells a grimly improbable tale of a man who tries to sell his fellow villagers a whip that resurrects the dead. The story inspired some of Prokofiev's most gleefully barbaric music, and allowed the Kirov players and Gergiev to show off their riotous virtuosity.
The furious drive of Gergiev's approach to Prokofiev also defined his performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's famous arrangement of Mussorgsky's Night on the Bare Mountain, which glowered with dark, obsessive intensity. There was more occult mystique in Liadov's Kikimora. Possibly influenced by Dukas's L'Apprenti Sorcier, Liadov depicts sorcery with a monothematic texture and arcane bassoon interjections.
But the touchstones for musical representations of Russian fairy tales are Tchaikovsky's three great ballets. Gergiev presented the final act of The Sleeping Beauty. This was an exceptional performance, despite a horribly out-of-tune piano.
Gergiev's interpretation of The Sleeping Beauty was underpinned by a symphonic seriousness of purpose. He characterised the often tiny dances with a thrilling rhythmic vitality, while maintaining a sure grip of the ballet's overall shape. The climactic pas de deux and concluding Apotheosis were charged with both vivid attention to detail and clinching structural significance. Diaghilev introduced The Sleeping Beauty to western audiences in London in 1921, and the effect of this performance was as illuminating as those first performances must have been.
