Oddly enough, none of the 3 works on last night's Toronto Symphony concert was overtly about the sea. None the less, two of the three pieces had passages which could be interpreted by a listener as towering, slow-moving oceanic waves (the third was another matter altogether).
I'd wondered ahead of time why this program received only a single performance, but that proved to be the orchestra's goodbye before their short weekend tour to Ottawa and Montreal. This was the programme that they will be presenting to audiences in those two cities.
The climax of the concert, in every sense, came after the intermission with Bruckner's monumental Symphony # 7. First time I've ever heard this symphony played live. I'm such a huge fan of Bruckner's music that it seems a pity I wasn't born in Austria, his homeland -- and one of the very few countries where his works appear regularly in concert programmes. Bruckner's music is really unlike any other composer, and to be able to play it effectively you have to be able to play the game by the composer's rules. Everything in Bruckner happens over long time spans, and often at only a slow-to-moderate speed. The real essence of this composer's remarkable music, though, isn't in his unusual structures or long-breathed melodies. You don't have to share it, but you absolutely must, must understand and take account of Bruckner's very strong faith in God. Once you do that, you can see his symphonies for what they are, musical equivalents of the great heaven-storming cathedrals found all over Europe.
I'm making this point because the absolute acid test of any performance of Bruckner # 7 is what happens in the long slow second movement. This is the climax of the entire symphony, and it has to be right. This music moves in a series of large slow waves, each one looming bigger and bigger. The fourth and largest wave is built up over a rising series of reiterations of the main theme of the movement, and these reiterations also move through some surprising key changes until the moment when the full orchestra unleashes its power, crowned by the one and only crash of the cymbals in all of Bruckner. And then, immediately afterwards, comes the slow, dark, mournful chorale intoned by a quartet of Wagner tubas, which Bruckner composed as soon as he heard of the death of Wagner.
Now, all of this was beautifully played, and the power of that astounding climax was undeniable. But I was still left feeling a bit underwhelmed. Somehow it all seemed to unfold a little too easily, with not enough sense of tension and build-up in the process. This might also be partly a question of dynamics. I felt the orchestra needed to start quieter at the beginning of that last ascent to the mighty peak of the music, and that more ebb and flow could be built into the ascent. Oundjian and his players certainly demonstrated in several other passages that they could have done so. This performance certainly put the roof onto the cathedral, but didn't exactly finish the spire that should have been its crowning glory.
No such complaints about the scherzo, a movement which would have been unthinkable without the scherzo of Beethoven's Ninth. The Austrian peasant dance origins of the music are still there, just barely, but Oundjian and company gave this movement a savage, ferocious reading that took it far into the realm of giants and monsters. Even the trio section remained intense, far from the relaxing interlude it can become in some hands.
The first and fourth movements definitely worked well too, and the last long build-up to the coda of the symphony was very effectively handled, with the crowning return of the opening theme of the entire work soaring above the orchestra. If this wasn't the truly great Bruckner for which I was hoping, it was very much better than average overall, and very effective.
By discussing the Bruckner first, I do not by any means intend to suggest that the rest of the concert didn't matter. The concert opened with Affiliate Composer Kevin Lau's Treeship. This joins the short-but-growing list of new works I have heard which definitely bear repeating. Not least this is the case because Lau has evolved a musical language which is capable of growing and developing structurally in an almost Classical manner. Repeated hearings will be necessary to truly grasp the processes at work in the piece. What I can certainly state after a single hearing is that Lau has an ability, rare among contemporary composers known to me, to create extended melodic statements lasting for a number of measures. These long-lined themes are particularly effective when entrusted to the strings as they are at several key points in this work, including it's very opening moments. The use of the strings as melodic, lyrical instruments has been far more often neglected than exploited among contemporary works I have heard in concert.
Matters became decidedly more interesting when the winds and brasses joined in to move the music on to its climactic passages, which rear up like huge ocean waves. The first one, a kind of brass-wind chorale, sounded almost like soundtrack for a 1950s Hollywood Biblical epic movie, but the last major climax had a sound that was positively Brucknerian -- a most unusual direction for any modern composer to go. At any rate, Treeship was a very appropriate companion to the Bruckner symphony which came after and was well worth another hearing.
The hall was filled right to the limit, and this was largely due to the second piece: the familiar and well-loved Violin Concerto in E Minor by Mendelssohn, featuring Augustin Hadelich as soloist. Although this isn't overtly tragic music in any way, it is in one sense almost the Hamlet of the classical music world since it is so brim-full of familiar tunes and quotations. Familiarity in this case has not bred contempt, but I think it has caused many of us (myself certainly) to lose sight of the many remarkable innovations built into this work by the mature composer.
Mendelssohn decisively broke with the classical concerto model built up by Haydn and others and perfected by Mozart and Beethoven. Right at the start, it is the violinist (not the orchestra) which introduces the beautiful opening melody. Instead of the violin concluding the solo cadenza on a trill or shake, it is the full orchestra which produces the trill (twice). The solo cadenza comes, not at the end of the first movement, but in the middle, bridging from the development section to the recapitulation of the opening theme -- and was written out in full by the composer. And finally, the end of the movement does not cut off completely, as a solo bassoon sustains its note from the final chord and leads the wandering slow transition which eventually settles into C major for the sweetly lyrical slow movement.
I've never been so thankful that Toronto Symphony audiences are not in the habit of applauding after concerto first movements, as this unique and novel transition would be completely destroyed if they did!
The concerto as a whole is sometimes dramatic, but more often lyrical and melodic, and does not require the same weight of playing as the bigger violin concertos of Brahms, Tchaikovsky or Elgar -- indeed, a certain lightness of touch and grace of style is essential here. These qualities Augustin Hadelich brought in full to his interpretation. His solo cadenza was especially noteworthy for the sense of suspension of time that he brought to it, so that the pauses actually felt like breaths taken and held in. In the slow movement his tone was sweet, but not to the point of cloying. The light-hearted romp of the finale showed both orchestra and soloist in high spirits, and captured in full measure the essential style -- less like a final concerto movement than like another of Mendelssohn's light-hearted fairy scherzos (as in A Midsummer Night's Dream or the string Octet). Peter Oundjian did a fine job of balancing the orchestra with the soloist so that neither one was slighted by the other. All in all, a fine performance, and not just a routine traversal.
Hadelich's encore was the fifth Caprice by Paganini, and here his virtuoso skills were taxed far beyond anything Mendelssohn's concerto could throw at him. But all the fast-flying notes and lightning-quick arpeggios registered clearly and sharply, and that's saying a good deal -- I'm sure there are many violinists who wouldn't necessarily care to play a piece like this for an audience of 2500 people!
Definitely a memorable concert, and our fellow concert-goers in Ottawa and Montreal should enjoy themselves as much and feel as richly rewarded as the Toronto audience and I did last night.
No comments:
Post a Comment