Music and Sentiment

By David Moratón

Semyon Bychkov and the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne reached the heart of the audience with Rachmaninoff

Often it happens that certain experiences that have marked our lives are powerfully linked to the discovery of other great works of music. The bond that is created then lies in the memory of the essence itself and the precise moment of consciousness, remembering precedents from that time when our existence was so powerful, that it made us revive the experience vital in definitive form.

When I discovered the second symphony of Sergei Rachmaninoff, not by chance, I essentially affirmed time itself; not my life or the emergence of a great love, and up to here, let me make parenthesis to explain the meaning of the work, a process of symbiosis, the vivid experience enriches the music, and the music enriches the experience.

The brilliant interpretation of this symphony that was offered to us by the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, conducted by Semyon Bychkov, not only helped me with the cathartic liberation and discovery of emotions, but also awakened asleep and ineffable sensations, being the watch of February 9th at the Auditorium in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, at the 23rd Festival of Music of the Canary Islands. First, it is worth highlighting the cleanliness of sound and the precision in the execution of the performers of the Cologne Radio Orchestra. The metallic instruments vibrated with tremendous strength, in a perfect section of string in every moment vibrated to the rhythm of the heart. On the other hand, the director Semyon Bychkov carries with great immediacy and significant weight everything that had been designed by Rachmaninoff as his successor. His presence seems illuminated by bombast and professionalism. Without exaggerated gestures, and without marking the tempo in the entrances too much, Bychkov

is implicated completely in the music, making it possible that the sound experience becomes an authentic pleasure. The protagonists of the first part of the program, dedicated to the Double concerto for violin and cello in the minor of Johannes Brahms, were Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, violin and cello respectively, who offered an exhibition of virtuosity that was rewarded with long applause. And already in the second part was Bychkov, together with the spirit of Rachmaninoff, who reached the neuralgic center of each heart (it is demonstrated that the heart also has neurons). Thunderous applause, an invigorating audience that got up to applaud and congratulate the concert, an eager, sincere gratitude; really moved by what was experienced during the effects of the music, something that did not happen at the Auditorium in Tenerife.

From the first creative age of 10 years, produced by the cruel critiques received towards his first symphony and after having escaped the reception to the detriment of it, and in the medium proportioned by the hypnosis, Rachmaninoff composed works like his Concert for piano no. 2 and demonstrates with this that the mind and the fault of maximum impetus cannot eclipse, but never to forget. The fruit of that remedy, began the most inconsolable life and life of Rachmaninoff, also Symphony number 2, in C minor, opus 27, an prodigious musical work that surpasses the consolation to the denuded vision of the essence of sentiment, how culminating the introspective process of romanticism, and who was directed in superb form by Bychkov who did not need excessive flourish. The initial introduction, and very slowly the third movement, an adagio of indescribable beauty and delicate melodic continuity, constitute isolated elements that can make us forget to breathe, the sensation of being in love: a state of extreme empathy that desires eternity, to include forgetfulness of time.

El Dia, Tenerife, Spain
14 February
2007