One of the greatest gifts of music is its ability to reflect and heighten our emotional states, to arouse feelings in us beyond anything we knew we could feel.
At the Toronto Symphony concert last night, I had only my second chance ever to hear a live performance of a work that, for me, embodies that principle in its fullest form. As a bonus, the concert also included three other genuine masterpieces!
After 1945, composer Richard Strauss was in a state of melancholy coming close to genuine despair. The cultured world in which he had grown up was gone, gone forever, amid the rubble left behind by the Nazi madness. During these last years of his life he composed several works steeped in those emotions, all of which are for me incredibly moving. None are more so, though, than the final group of four lieder for soprano and orchestra which he composed during the last year of his life, 1948. Although he did not conceive of these as a cycle per se, they have always been performed as one and are now known as the Vier letzte Lieder ("Four Last Songs"). There are two things that link these four songs inextricably into a chain: the thread of poetic meaning in the verses, and the magnificent orchestration, a true summation of the composer's lifelong development in that art.
The verses by Hesse and Eichendorff speak of autumn, and twilight, sleep, and night -- all symbols of death. Although the mood is dark, the songs welcome death with calmness, with resignation, and above all with a sense of completeness and fulfilment. The Eichendorff song, Im Abendrot ("In Twilight"), was composed before the others, but it is rightly given the place of honour at the end of the cycle as this is the song where the singer finally -- in the very last line -- pronounces the word itself: "Ist dies, etwa, der Tod?" ("Is this, perhaps, death?"). What follows then is the last and perhaps the greatest of Strauss' many lyrical orchestral epilogues: slow, quiet, quoting the Transfiguration motif from his early tone poem Death and Transfiguration, and at last pausing during the final extended cadence to recall the trilling larks (flutes) heard earlier in the song. It's the most heart-rending, utterly perfect conclusion that could possibly be imagined.
The impact of this music is so immense and intense upon me that I can't even write about it without bringing tears into my eyes. That in part is due to a recollection of a 1975 concert in the Royal Festival Hall in London, where I heard these songs for the first time. I had no idea what to expect, but the power and intensity of the performance were overwhelming. Soloist Evelyn Lear had the entire audience held in rapt attention that stretched on for many seconds after the last notes faded to silence. In my estimation, that concert stamped her forever as an artist of the very highest rank.
How then did soprano Sondra Radvanovsky fare by comparison? It's a deeply challenging work, the words and melodies calling for a lyrical quality and careful text interpretation while the heavy lush orchestration forces the singer to go loud. The first song was delivered in a trumpeting full voice, and I was a little concerned, but in the remaining three she shaded her tone much more and achieved a genuine pianissimo at the end. Apart from one minor glitch in the third song, she had the music firmly in hand although I could have wished for clearer diction. But in the final number, none of that mattered. I just abandoned myself to the music, closed my eyes, and let the tears come as they would. The orchestral sound was marvellous throughout, and that final cadence under the flute trills faded into silence exactly as it should.
Now, what about the rest of the concert? It opened with a neat, precise performance of the overture to Don Giovanni (Mozart) led by resident conductor Shalom Bard. The rest of the program was led by music director Peter Oundjian. The Strauss songs were next, and then after the intermission we were given the two suites from Daphnis and Chloe, Ravel's revolutionary ballet score of 1910. In a way, the term "suite" is a little misleading, since it implies a collection of short excerpts. These are simply two large chunks detached from the whole score -- the first suite encompassing the battle in which Chloe is kidnapped by pirates, and the second giving the end portion from the sunrise through the pantomime of Pan and Syrinx (with its languorous flute solo) to the roof-rattling Danse generale in hectic 5/4 time which ends the ballet. This is a famous orchestral showpiece indeed, and all departments of the orchestra were right up to the mark. The only beef I have is that the all-important choral part was omitted. Ravel treated the choral sound as part of his sound palette, so no words are used, but a lot of important musical material goes missing when the voices are left out! But still, a spectacular performance driven through to a rousing conclusion.
That ended the pre-printed program, but it was still just 90 minutes, and Oundjian had promised an encore. This proved to be very substantial indeed. The orchestra is touring to Europe in August, and one of the works on the tour is the Symphonic Dances of Rachmaninoff. It's a notable headline work for the Toronto orchestra, and is included in one of their live-concert CD recordings. The encore was the third and final dance, as fiendish and demonic a work as can be found in all of music. The fast sections which begin and end it are shot through with all kinds of insane changes of time signature and fierce cross-rhythms. In between you get the last and darkest of Rachmaninoff's brooding Romantic melodies. The coda is introduced by multiple repetitions of the composer's favourite Dies Irae theme, and then turns to the Russian Easter hymn which he set so memorably for voices in the much earlier Vespers. Here it precipitates a full-scale battle which ends the piece in an uproar.
If you want to show what an orchestra can do, this is one of the best pieces I know for the purpose. On Saturday it felt a bit loose around the edges, but having heard them do it before I know it will tighten up a great deal before the tour. Certainly the closing pages, with the Dies Irae, the Easter hymn and the ferocious coda, were as hair-raising as anyone could ask.
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