Concert Review: Beethoven Lives on Broad Street

David Zinman brings new life to the Fifth Symphony.

Iconoclast: the conductor David Zinman. Photo © 2011 Berlin Philharmonic/DavidZinman.org

On Friday afternoon at the Kimmel Center, conductor David Zinman brought a fresh perspective to one of the most well-traveled works in the repertory: Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. This is an important work to the Philadelphia Orchestra, who started their long history by playing it way back at their first concert in the year 1900.

Mr. Zinman, an American conductor and music director of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, is known for his iconoclastic approach to Beethoven. He uses Jonathan del Mar's critical edition of the scores (published by Bärenreiter in the late 1990s) and takes a vigorous approach to the music. At this concert, Mr. Zinman's conducting stripped away years of aural varnish and debate about performance practice, revealing the bright tone colors beneath.

Although some conductors take a wild, unpredictable approach to the Fifth (in the name of "interpretation") that was not the case here. True, Mr. Zinman does emphasize the unfamiliar aspects of the score, making the part for double basses prominent, and elevating Beethoven's harmonic writing to the same level as the core melodies. And he adds some fanciful details that are entirely his own, most notably an extended "fantasia" oboe cadenza played by Philadelphia associate principal Peter Smith. But none of these ideas subtracted from the totality of the work.

Tempos were brisk, but never rushed. The Philadelphia players bit incisively into the famous four-note rhythm that dominates the entire symphony. The slow movement, with its complex set of variations became a vast, entertaining juggling act. The third movement, with its two contrasting ideas, featured robust playing from the trumpets and cellos. The beginning of the finale, where the trombones seem to "jump in" spontaneously, elevated the whole performance. Mr. Zinman conducted without a score, and everyone knew the piece cold. But they played it as if it were new music being brought before the public for the first time.

This modern, invigorating approach to music-making was also suited to the first half of Friday's program. The concert opened with the Orchestra's second-ever performance of Ash, a tone poem by Michael Torke. Like Beethoven, Mr. Torke builds his work around simple, obsessive rhythms--in this case a pair of six-note phrases that served as a rhythmic foundation for the entire piece. He created rich tonal colors, painting with brass, strings, and even synthesizer in the course of a hypnotic 15 minutes.

Mr. Torke's piece was followed by William Walton's Viola Concerto, a work that allows that instrument the rare opportunity to take the spotlight The solo part was played by Choong-Jin Chang, the Philadelphia Orchestra's principal and leader of the viola section. Although the warm tones of the viola are central to the string-heavy "Philly sound", Mr. Chang clearly relished his chance to stand up front. He offered smooth, fluid playing that demonstrated every tonal color of this underrated instrument. 

Mr. Zinman showed impressive grasp of Walton's structure, bringing affirmation in the final pages.  Over the course of two slow movements and a dancing central scherzo Mr. Chang and Mr. Zinman made a compelling case for this complex, yet lyric work. The Concerto ends (unusually) with a blow-by-blow quotation of the opening of the first movement, creating a circular effect. The wonder was not that Walton chose to create a solo concerto for the alto member of the string family, but that so few other composers have followed suit.

Concert Review: No Bears Allowed!

Yale musicians offer "Vocal Britain" at Zankel Hall.

Thanks to the efficient Bear Patrol, William Walton's The Bear was not performed.
Image from The Simpsons © 1996 Gracie Films/20th Century Fox

The Yale in New York music series opened its 2011 New York season on Sunday night with Vocal Britain, a concert featuring rarities from English composers Benjamin Britten and William Walton. The program originally included The Bear, Walton's one-act opera  from 1967. The work was cancelled due to illness, and replaced with the much earlier (and more rare) Façade.

The concert opened with Song for the Lord Mayor's Table a short song cycle by Walton that incorporates medieval rhyme alongside traditional songs and poetry by William Blake. These six poems were sung with energy and clarion tone by mezzo-soprano Janna Baty. The work presented in its original version for piano and voice, with skillful accompaniment by Jill Brunelle.

Ms. Baty brought sardonic resignation to "Wapping Old Stairs," the story of a long relationship and the effect of infidelity upon the doing of laundry. A searching sense of mystery penetrated "Holy Thursday," the Blake poem. "The Contrast" explored the dichotomy of city life with vacations in the country. Ms. Baty pulled out the stops for "Rhyme." In this final poem, her voice rang out even as she evokes the ringing bells of London's church towers.

Chamber musicians from Yale took the stage for the next work, Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings. William Purvis played the opening horn solo on a natural horn, and then picked up a valved instrument for the folowing songs. The work moves through a cycle of poems by Charles Cotton, Lord Tennyson, William Blake, Ben Jonson and John Keats, and ends with a final, quiet horn solo played from offstage.

The work was written as a study for Britten's opera Peter Grimes, and explores some of the same bleak emotional territory as that work. Tenor Dann Coakwell took the role of a skilled lieder interpreter, guiding the listener through the work's mood of twilight and disquieting darkness. The final horn part seemed to echo in the emotional void left by the poems, making a powerful, nihilistic statement.

Written in 1922, Façade sets the nonsense poetry of Edith Sitwell in a style that combines singing, sprechgesang and speech. It's a bastard cousin to Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire or Stravinsky's L'histoire de soldat, with deliberately absurd words traded back and forth between narrator John McDonough and Ms. Baty. Although the poetry proved wearing after about five selections, the skilled wind playing from the Yale musicians made this a musical journey worth taking.