A triumph of programming - ADDA Symfonica with Ivan Martin under Yaron Traub play unfamiliar Scriabin and Tchaikovsky

Much thought nowadays is devoted to the construction of concert programmes. A mass audience, almost by definition, is dictatorial. The old favourites are always safe, and the need for posteriors on bucket seats often demands repetition of the hackneyed, the overplayed lollipops of popular taste. But there is also another side to programming these days, an approach that explores the repertoire and, at least, for part of the concert, challenges an audience to listen without expectation, or pre-judgment. Usually this is done by including a contemporary piece alongside a cobwebbed standard. Sometimes, as in last night’s concert in Alicante’s ADDA auditorium, it is achieved by exploring the lesser known, less played works of well-known names. It is rare, however, for a whole concert to be devoted to such less well-known early works.

In an all-Russian program, the ADDA orchestra under Yaron Traub played two works, written just three decades apart in the nineteenth century, Scriabin’s Piano Concerto from the 1890s and Tchaikovsky Symphony No.1, Winter Daydreams, from the 1860s. The truly inspired element of the programming was the shared significance of both these works in the careers of their creators.

Both works are seen as early works, written before the development of the composer’s mature style. In the case of Scriabin, of course, we could discuss precisely what that might have been at some length. Both works have become labelled as breakthrough works, in both cases the creator’s first orchestral success - again in Scriabin’s case this might be debatable! But together, they offer an audience a terrific insight into how these creative minds developed by locating, essentially, where they started from.

Scriabin’s Piano Concerto was written to show off his own virtuosity. It does sound rather like Chopin, even conservative in outlook, given that this style was already half a century old by the 1890s. The composer scored the piano to play close to continuously throughout piece, and there are a couple of places where the orchestra drowns the soloist, but then he would do that later in Prometheus, wouldn’t he? And here there’s no real cadenza, no real opportunity for the soloist to take centre stage, which is strange, given the composer’s self-serving motivation. Orchestration, at this point in Scriabin’s career, was clearly not a strong point, but the integration of soloist and orchestra in the work was its forward-looking aspect. Ivan Martin’s performance was beyond perfect and it was his contrasting encore of baroque trilling.

Winter Daydreams, the Symphony No1, was Tchaikovsky’s breakthrough work. Unlike Scriabin, at the same age, Tchaikovsky showed in this early work much that would become his mature style. There is even a passage for horns in this work which sounds like it came straight out of Nutcracker. And again, unlike Scriabin, Tchaikovsky’s regular use of long lines of theme give this work almost the feel of a novel with a linear plot. All the strong contrasts and outbursts, which were later to characterize his writing, are here already formed, part of the composer’s language.

It is a great program that can surprise through assumed, but misunderstood familiarity.