Concert Review: Reverse Culture Shock

Daniel Harding conducts Knussen, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky.

Daniel Harding. Photo by K. Miura.

In setting a symphony program, it is common practice to slip a modern work in between tried-and-true compositions, giving audiences a chance to hear cutting-edge music in conjunction with their favorites.

Concert Review: The Thirty-Year Itch

Bernard Haitink returns to the New York Philharmonic

Bernard Haitink makes a point. Photo © CSO Resound Classics

When Bernard Haitink last conducted the New York Philharmonic, the compact disc had just been invented. Ronald Reagan was president, and the orchestra was completing a transition from the experimentation of the Pierre Boulez regime to a more conservative direction under Zubin Mehta.

This week, the Dutch conductor returned to the podium in Avery Fisher Hall for the first time in thirty years. For his return, Mr. Haitink chose a pair of conventional works that are not too frequently played by this orchestra. The concert opened with Strauss' tone poem Don Quixote followed by Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, the Pastoral.

Mr. Haitink is now 82, and celebrating his fifth decade as a professional conductor. He led the band with vigor, conducting both works with sure hands, a quick baton, and a steady, light-footed approach to the music. His conducting remains pristine and precise, drawing a warm, balanced quality of sound, bringing out the very best from this fine orchestra.

Don Quixote is essentially a cello concerto blended with a tone poem. Strauss casts this noble instrument (played here by Philharmonic principal Carter Brey) as the mad, chivalric knight. Principal violist Cynthia Phelps took the part of Sancho Panza, her lines doubled with a tenor tuba. Like Cervantes' great novel, the tone poem has an episodic structure. It takes a skilled hand to make the work hang together.

Strauss contrasts the virtuoso solo parts with masterful orchestration, depicitng the good Don's actions against villains real and imagined. The complex brass parts create the aural illusion of spinning windmill blades, bleating sheep, and the good citizens of Spain, who the Don faces off with in the interests of his honor. Mr. Brey and Ms. Phelps embodied the protagnist with virtuosic playing, engaging in witty musical dialogue with Mr. Haitink and Philharmonic concertmaster Glenn Dicterow.

It could be argued that Beethoven's Sixth is the great-grandfather of all tone poems. Beethoven expanded this symphony to five movements, and assigned short titles to each. With some influence from the illustrative writing of Haydn and the opera overtures of Mozart, this was the first piece of program music. The Pastoral paved the way for the Romantic movement that breathed its last with Strauss' death.

Mr. Haitink took the opening Allegro (subtitled "Cheerful Impressions on Arriving in the Countryside") at a brisk, tempo that sacrificed none of the idyllic qualities that are central to this music. The slow "Scene by the Brook" had some gorgeous playing from the cellos, led by Mr. Brey, restored to his place leading the section. Flautist Robert Langevin and oboist Liang Wang were perfect "birds" in the movement's final secton, worthy of a Messiaen sketch.

Thankfully, the orchestra chose to take the repeat in the "Merry Dance of Country Folk", slamming into the "Storm" without pausing for breath. The chugging strings and howling (wood)winds gave way to a serene horn-call. This was the finale, the "Shepherd's Song" played with deep, almost religious meaning and a gorgeous line from the principal horn. As the melody was tossed from section to section, it teased the development of a gorgeous fugue. Mr. Haitink's country excursion ended a satisfying final two chords, a sonorous ending to this profound work.

Concert Review: Full Silken Jacket

No tuxedos for Kurt Masur, just Schubert and Shostakovich.

Busted: Kurt Masur, 2009.
Sculpture by Bertrand Friesleben.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Former New York Philharmonic Music Director Kurt Masur returned to  the podium of Avery Fisher Hall this week. Mr. Masur is now 84. And he still doesn't use a baton. But he remains a thinking man's conductor, a compelling music maker of the old school who does not let his age or medical conditions affect the beauty of his performance.

On Friday night, the maestro looked pale, frail-looking, and his left hand trembled uncontrollably. However, he delivered a compelling performance of a compelling program, music that sounded comfortable as the tangzhuang jacket he wore instead of white tie.

The concert opened with a thoroughly Romantic reading of Schubert's 8th, the most famous torso in the orchestral repertory. These two movements were played at a broad pace, giving the orchestra's players room to luxuriate in Schubert's phrases. But the horns had trouble early, creating unattractive tones in the first movement's signature theme. The cellos, integral to the rhythmic makeup of this symphony, played superbly. 

Mr. Masur's second piece was Dmitri Shostakovich's Thirteenth Symphony, a choral symphony also known as Babi Yar. The orchestra was joined by baritone Sergei Leiferkus and the New York Choral Artists, the same team that recorded this symphony in 1994. The most political of Shostakovich's fifteen symphonies, Babi Yar is a setting five uncompromising poems from the acid pen of  Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

The poems and their symphony are products of the "cultural thaw" that took place in Russia under Khrushchev. But even the "thaw" froze on the Thirteenth, which was banned in Russia in 1963 after only a handful of performances. The music is tough and uncompromising with snarling brass, complex percussion and slamming chords dominating the titular first poem, a reflection on the Nazi massacre of over 33,771 Jews outside Kiev on Sept. 29-30 1941.

The poems were sung by Sergei Lefeirkus, a Russian baritone with a long history of playing villains onstage. He was grim and dark of tone in the opening movement, singing with passion, pleading the case that as the "true Russian" is he who attacks and condemns the anti-Semite. With its frightening descriptions of pogroms and figures like Anne Frank, this movement is hard going. Mr. Masur brought out the stark, black-and-white quality in Shostakovich's writing, helped by superb brass and percussion work from his old orchestra.

Mr. Lefeirkus did his best to inject a light note into the jaunty second poem Humor, with its brassy, Mahlerian march figure. The setting also recalls the nose-thumbing of Strauss' Till Eulenspiegel, although the Russian phrase "юмор показывал кукиш!" translates to something other than what appeared in the super-titles. Mr. Leiferkus returned to seriousness for the slow In the Store, accompanied movingly by Mr. Masur.

Fears is the toughest movement of this symphony, opening with a long 11-note tuba solo that recalls Wagner's dragon from Siegfried. Alan Baer played that difficult solo with superb breath control, laying groundwork for the dark movement that followed. Mr. Masur cast a familiar spell over his old orchestra, weaving his fingers in complex patterns, lifting an elbow, shifting a shoulder and drawing out Shostakovich's complex tonalities and instrumental textures.

Mr. Lefeirkus lightened up for the final A Career, a sarcastic meditation on the wisdom of speaking out against visionaries like Galileo, Newton and Tolstoy. His interaction at that point with the men of the New York Choral Artists ("Lev?" "Lev!") was a high point. As the symphony came to an end, Shostakovich brought back the "Humor" theme (as a chilly solo for bass clarinet) and the final "Babi Yar" motive, played very softly, with chamber-like textures by the principal strings and wind.

Concert Review: Oh, What a Mountain!

Lorin Maazel ascends the Alpine Symphony.

The happy wanderer: former Philharmonic Music Director Lorin Maazel.
Photo by Chris Lee, © 2009 New York Philharmonic.

On Friday morning, former New York Philharmonic music director led the orchestra in an assault on Richard Strauss' Eine Alpensinfonie, as part of an all-Strauss program at Avery Fisher Hall. This is the second week of concerts featuring Mr. Maazel, marking the first time he has returned to the orchestra since stepping down in 2009.

The Alpine Symphony is Strauss' final tone poem, and one of his more obscure large-scale works. It is a huge composition, built in 22 miniature movements, spanning an hour and played without pause. Strauss wrote for a giant orchestra: eight horns, quadruple wind, two timpanists, 12 offstage brasses and exotic percussion. The subject: the vigorous ascent and descent of a formidable Bavarian alp. Like Strauss' earlier Also Sprach Zarathustra, this work was inspired by the writings of Nietzsche. It quotes Zarathustra several times, and also recycles a theme from Der Rosenkavalier.

Mr. Maazel took a leisurely approach to the lower slopes, leading the orchestra through sun-dappled forests, aurally visiting a waterfall and a meadow occupied by cows. The offstage brass (representing a hunting party) played from up in the third tier. Their horn-calls were at a surprisingly slow tempo, which made the cinematic effect  proved more distracting than anything else.

As the climbers traversed a glacier and approached the peak, the pace quickened. The climax of this piece takes place halfway through, a thrilling moment on the summit marked by a gigantic surge of the main theme, accompanied by a clash of cymbals. A lone, stammering oboe solo followed: the aural equivalent of a tiny red arrow stating "You are here."

Now that he was at the peak of the composition Mr. Maazel slowed down again to take in the view. A spectacular storm in the last sections of the work brought the full fury of the orchestra, complete with whooshing wind machine, droning organ and a sixteen-foot-long thunder sheet shaken by percussionist Christopher Lamb. The ending was far more quiet, a symmetrical return to the opening pages without the offstage horns.

After a pause at base camp (presumably for oxygen) the concert resumed with principal horn Philip Myers playing Strauss' First Horn concerto. Mr. Myers brought noble tone and delivery to this potent, proto-Mozartean concerto, written for Strauss' father when the budding composer was just 18. This is one of the young Strauss' first mature works, and a concert favorite of Mr. Myers.

Mr. Myers returned to his usual chair for Till Eulenspiegel, the famous Strauss tone poem about the cheeky rogue whose mischief inspired memorable orchestral writing. Represented by the horn and clarinet, Till ran roughshod over the orchestra. Mr. Maazel seemed to fence the air with his baton as the band played this evergreen work with their usual élan. The hanging of Till was brought off with drama and power, with the clarinet blowing a last raspberry.