The season-end concert at the Kitchener-Waterloo SO on Friday night -- good but not great, but I still enjoyed the evening.
The opener was a 1977 work by Canadian composer Claude Vivier entitled Palau Dewata. This was a unique score when Vivier composed it, under the inspiration and influence of music and dance he encountered on an extended visit to Bali. The score consists simply of notes, but with no specific instrumentation prescribed. That frees the performers to select whatever instruments seem best to meet the need.
On Friday we heard the work in an "arrangement" or "realization" for very full orchestra by Scott Good. I'm not sure whether this can fairly be called Vivier's work. From descriptions in the program notes, and the comments of Music Director Edwin Outwater, I'm inclined to guess (and it's only a guess) that this is more in the line of Busoni's "arrangement" for piano of Bach's famous Chaconne in D Minor -- rather a detailed elaboration on the original than a faithful transcription.
In any case, the result was a fascinating kaleidoscope of rhythms, melodies, and interesting harmonic textures. I stress the rhythmic aspect only because so much modern music falls apart for lack of it, but this piece moved constantly and with purpose throughout its 12-minute span. How much of that is due to the credit of Vivier, and how much to Good, I can't really say.
The second work was the Piano Concerto # 2 in B-Flat Major, Opus 19 by Beethoven. To clarify right away: this was actually composed before the concerto we know as # 1, and it shows. The piano part contains more pointers towards the mature Beethoven, especially in the first movement, but the orchestral part remains for the most part firmly grounded in the classical style perfected by Haydn and Mozart -- and certainly a fine example of that style.
Oddly enough, the opening tutti of the first movement was the weakest moment of the whole concert, as the orchestra had some difficulty settling firmly and clearly on Outwater's choice of tempo (perhaps due to lack of rehearsal time?). After about 10 bars or so the ensemble finally gelled, and from then on the piece flowed much more smoothly throughout all three movements. Full credit for the extremely quiet sustained string chords during the piano cadenza in the slow movement -- the sense of rapt attention for the soloist's next utterance was palpable. Also memorable was the sheer lightness and air of fantasy (appropriately Mozartean) in the central episode of the finale -- orchestra and pianist alike danced through these pages which can easily sound too portentous (after all, this isn't the Emperor Concerto yet!).
Ah, the pianist! Alexander Seredenko is definitely a man to watch in the future. This young man's technique is formidable -- not many people can perform Beethoven publicly with such skill while sitting on the piano stool as comfortably as if it were an armchair in a good friend's home. But more than that, there's a definite potential here for the development of that rarest of phenomena, a first-rate pianist who is also a first-rate musician. Hard to believe I haven't heard him, or heard of him, before this but I have no doubt we'll be hearing from him again.
The final work was a true warhorse, the Symphonie fantastique by Berlioz. It's easy to let familiarity dull one's awareness of the complexities of this work, and the numerous traps for the unwary that lie hidden amongst its pages. Outwater certainly had the measure of the challenge, and in some passages he triumphed. Others, such as the concluding pages of the Witches' Sabbath got away from him to some extent, and here I think slightly less acceleration to the finish line might have served the music better. Another difficulty was the deep bells used, which in no way landed on the exact pitches notated in the score -- a rather painful shortcoming.
But there were also notable strengths. The orchestra held firmly together through all the numerous tempo shifts in the long first movement. The second movement ball scene lifted and flowed beautifully, the harps clearly heard in their important task of casting a kind of haze of romance over the picture. The offstage oboe at the beginning of the third movement was a little too present, and there might be a better location in the hall which would allow the sound to come more distantly, as intended. But the duet of the English horn and oboe was magnificently played nonetheless. The March to the Scaffold was crisp, clear, and brutal in its force, tubas blaring malignantly.
Take it all in all, this was a good concert -- and certainly enjoyable -- even if there were some aspects that could have been improved.
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