St. Petersburg Palaces Festival

Francis Poulenc Trio Sizzles in Summer Blockbuster Tour
- To Russia with Love (and Hilary Hahn)

This article appeared in the March 2005 issue of DoubleReed.

St. Petersburg, Russia. It had all the makings of a summer thriller. The Francis Poulenc Trio along with violinist Hilary Hahn toured Russia as featured guest artists at the St. Petersburg Palaces Festival. The festival, set in and around St. Petersburg, takes place during the White Nights - those few weeks in June when the sun sets well after midnight. In its twelfth year, the festival attracts soloists, conductors and ensembles from around the world.

The trio, Irina Lande, piano, Vladimir Lande, oboe and Bryan Young, bassoon, was joined by Grammy-award winning violinist Hilary Hahn. Hahn has strong musical connections to St. Petersburg – her first teacher was Baltimorean Clara Berkovich, a native St. Petersberger. And her violin, a 19th- century French Vuillame, was played for years at the Opera.

Hilary Hahn's appearance here was met with great public anticipation. Hahn, who appears regularly in concert halls around the world, had never made a concert appearance in Russia. There was unprecedented media coverage for the group's appearance, with rehearsals broadcast on Russia's Today Show, radio news conferences, and interviews on all the major news networks. The city was plastered with posters and banners advertising the concert. On the taxi ride into the city, the group was pleasantly surprised to see the concert touted on a gigantic JumboTron screen overlooking the famed Nevsky Prospect.

The trio and Hahn arrived in St. Petersburg a few days prior to the concert in order to rehearse. The repertoire for the concert program was to include two world premiere works, written specifically for the trip. The first, a jazzy work by American composer Thomas Benjamin, entitled Scriabin Sits in Birdland. Written in two movements, the piece dares to imagine what would happen if the great Russian composer Scriabin were to wander into a jazz nightclub. The second premiere was an arrangement of Chau Paris, Astor Piazolla's charming and nostalgic farewell to the city.

Also on the program was the Trio Pathetique by Mikhail Glinka, in honor of that composer's 200th birthday, a trio by the group's namesake, Francis Poulenc, a Russian premiere of Andre Previn's trio, and a sparkling Fantasy on Rossini's Italian in Algiers.
The trio rehearsed in the apartments of Rimsky-Korsakov, composer of such favorites as Scheherazade and long-time director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. The apartment, now open to the public as a museum, required the trio to wear special protective footwear during rehearsals. These slippers, which seemed more appropriate to Rimsky's era, made a fashionable statement during the trio's television appearance.
The concert took place in the Hermitage Theater. The theater is a beautiful hall of marble columns and plush red velvet, commissioned by Catherine the Great to showcase the great musical talents of her day. Located at the heart of the famed Winter Palace, it was used for centuries as the private theater of the Tsars.

For the trio's concert, the hall was filled with an enthusiastic audience whose rapturous applause punctuated each pause in the evening's proceedings. Also in attendance were television and radio crews from all of the country's major news networks.
There was a palpable sense of appreciation for what is here a rare combination of instruments and repertoire. The Francis Poulenc Trio is one of a few professional piano and wind trios in the world, and the addition of Hilary Hahn made for an unforgettable evening.

A few nights later, another special concert took place at the Grand Philharmonic Hall, when Vladimir Lande conducted the Festival Orchestra. His program included selections from Die Fledermaus, Carmen, a rarely performed concerto for Saxophone by Glazunov, and a rousing rendition of Ravel's Bolero. The 2000-seat concert hall was filled to capacity and the concert was made more poignant by the fact that it was a homecoming of sorts for Lande, who played oboe in the Philharmonic orchestra before coming to the States.

After the wonderfully well-received concerts, there was time for the musicians to sample some of St. Petersburg's nightlife, culture and cuisine. The group visited several of the city's newly opened restaurants, including a Ukrainian grotto with hearty folk-singing and dancing, the Purga, or the Blizzard, a hot spot that celebrates New Year's every night, and the Call of Lenin, an irreverent and entertaining club that skewers the old symbols of Communism in memorable fashion.

A fascinating feature of St. Petersburg's nightlife is that it is hardly night at all. St. Petersburg is the world’s northernmost European capital, and experiences the annual phenomenon known as the White Nights. During the month of June, the daylight stretches well into the nighttime hours, making sleep seem irrelevant. The trio took full advantage of the extra daylight, sightseeing, shopping and enjoying the cool summer nights.