From the repertoire alone, how could this weekend’s concerts of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra not stand as a highlight of the current season? And positing that, I take into account the bigger brand name orchestras in the adjacent metropolises of New York and Philadelphia. Rossen Milanov will conduct Tchaikovsky’s vertiginous, broody, and magnificent “Manfred Symphony” at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium in two performances, this Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m.
This music is Romantic with a capital R. The quintessential Byronic hero, Manfred is weary but indomitable, an unconquerable superman, tormented by unimaginable suffering. Haunted by mysterious guilt (in connection with the death of his beloved), he wanders the Bernese Alps, longing for extinction, and meets his fate defiantly, rejecting all authority, corporeal and supernatural. And as you know, it doesn’t take much to get Tchaikovsky to seethe most eloquently.
It will be very interesting to see how the group tackles this foray into the sublime, which requires a large orchestra with organ. (Richardson’s was removed years ago.) The work was originally scheduled for the ill-fated pandemic season of 2019-20, then coupled with Reinhold Glière’s Harp Concerto. If it could be thus, and it were not a madness and a mockery, I might have been most happy!
But I will definitely be content with Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto, one of the loveliest works of the composer’s neoclassical period, to be heard on the reconstituted program’s first half. Temperamentally, the concerto is worlds away from Tchaikovsky’s Alpine awesomeness, but its prismatic reflections on Baroque airs can be quite seductive, with the spirit of Bach flitting around the composer’s crystalline heart. Leila Josefowicz, last heard here in Alban Berg’s concerto in 2016, will return to Princeton as the work’s soloist.
The concerts are being presented in celebration of PSO music director Rossen Milanov’s 60th birthday. In the spirit of Manfred, I defy the solace of both cake and conviviality! However, I confess, I can’t wait to hear this program.
For tickets and information, visit princetonsymphony.org.
IMAGE: John Martin, “Manfred and the Witch of the Alps” (1837)
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