Concert Review: Dreaming in Color

Bernard Haitink and the BSO play Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Susan Graham (left) and Bernard Haitink perform Ravel's Shéhérezade last week at Symphony Hall.
Photo by Stu Rosner © 2014 Boston Symphony Orchestra.

For the second of their two concerts this week at Carnegie Hall, Bernard Haitink and the Boston Symphony Orchestra chose to devote an evening to the music of Maurice Ravel. This Swiss-born composer is known for precise musical construction and delicate orchestration--with a small but memorable output of works that can have the character of a complicated time-piece. However, this superb pairing of orchestra and conductor found emotional depth in these pieces, achieved through a high standard of performance.

Concert Review: Roast Goose with Chestnuts

The New York Philharmonic's holiday feast.
by Paul Pelkonen.

Cooking with a baton: New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2011 The New York Philharmonic.

On Wednesday night, the plain hardwood walls of Avery Fisher Hall's stage were draped with long skiens of crimson and purple fabric. I asked an usher on the way in, why the adornment?

"Oh, it's the holidays," she said. "And we're glad to have Alan Gilbert back."

This concert marked the first return of the Philharmonic music director to his home podium after a two-month absence, including a tour of Europe. But the program chosen for his return was dull by this conductor's standards, featuring familiar works by Haydn, Schubert and Ravel.


The concert opened with Haydn's Symphony No. 88, a rarely heard piece that stands as a kind of "odd man out" between its more famous brothers written for Paris and London. The work shows Haydn in post-Ezterházy experimentation,  expanding his orchestral palette. Mr. Gilbert took an incisive approach to the four movements, drawing crisp textures from the timpani and percussion and some lyric playing from principal cellist Carter Brey.

The orchestra was then joined by Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter for a set of Schubert songs, heard here in orchestral transcription. The selections were a "greatest hits" from the huge Schubert catalogue. Ms. von Otter's voice may be narrowing, but she still proves an engaging storyteller and a compelling stage presence.
Highlights were the Britten orchestration of Die Forelle ("The Trout") and Max Reger's mournful, searching version of Gretchen am Spinnerade, based on Goethe's Faust. The set ended with the same composer's version of Erlkönig. Although the orchestration lacks the impact of the piano original, Ms. von Otter drew chills when she changed voices and embodied Schubert's supernatural kidnapper.


The second half of the concert opened with the charming ballet suite Ma mère l'oye, Ravel's setting of children's stories commonly accredited to one Mother Goose. This work has its origin in a set of five works for piano four hands, written for the Swiss composer's niece and nephew. Here, it was Mr. Gilbert who made a case for the orchestrated version, drawing shimmering, exotic textures from the Philharmonic players.

In its orchestrated form, Ravel's orchestration allowed the listener to experience instruments that are not always featured. Especially interesting to the ear was the virtuoso part for contrabassoon, (played here by Arlen Fast)  in Les Entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête and the soaring walls of sound built by the horns and trombones. The final orchestral swell of Le Jardin féerique rose to an inspired height, buoyed by trumpets, oboe and clarinet.

The concert climaxed with La Valse, another reliable piece by Ravel. This allowed the percussionists to shine as the orchestra (finally appearing at full strength) swung through the demented triple-time textures and expertly navigated the pitfalls of meter and rhythm written meticulously into the score. Mr. Gilbert turned terpsichorean himself, dancing on the podium as the waltz turned and whirled. He seems more relaxed conducting without a score, anticipating each turn of the music and taking aim with his baton at soloists when the turn came for them to shine.


Contact the author: E-mail Superconductor editor Paul Pelkonen.

Concert Review: Who Needs Black Friday?

Ludovic Morolt conducts Harbison's Fourth, Mahler's First.

Composer John Harbison.
 Photo by Kathrin Talbot, © 2010 G. Schirmer and Associates.

James Levine vacated the position of Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in March of this year. But this week's program, conducted by his former assistant Ludovic Morlot, is very much a continuation of the programming idea prevalent in his seven-year tenure.

The program, played to a full Symphony Hall on the afternoon after Thanksgiving, opened with the Fourth Symphony by John Harbison. This was part of a two-year BSO initiative, to perform all of Mr. Harbison's extant symphonies by the end of this season. It will conclude in January with the premiere of his Sixth.

The Fourth is a bleak, unsmiling work in five movements. In his thoughtful program notes, the composer describes the work as a five-movement cure for his Gatsby hangover, following that work's mixed reception in 2000. Indeed, the first movement is jazz-inflected and brassy, almost strident until stopping dead against its own momentum. The second is indecisive, the sound of a man  beginning anew.

The third finds the composer emulating the work of Shostakovich with a dour double scherzo, Complicated dance rhythms tumbling over each other in and effort to express themselves. The funereal Threnody that followed was grim, terse effective. The final movement was bold and determined, the sound of a composer finding his groove, and moving on to what should be a brighter, more optimistic future.

Under Mr. Morolt, the Boston Symphony Orchestra played the Harbison work with taut power. They brought the same quality to the second Suite from Maurice Ravel's ballet Daphnis et Chloë. The large ensemble tackled these furious rhythms with glee, playing the closing "Danse generale" with gusto. 

The concert concluded with a Mahler First played with bold strokes. Despite a few balky notes from the bassoons, Mr. Morolt summoned the spirit of spring into Symphony Hall, making Mahler's chorales of offstage trumpets and onstage horns come together in a celebratory manner. 

The reeling, wine-tippling peasants of the second movement lurched groggily in. The joy was visible on the faces of the Boston players as they moved into the elegant trio before returning to Mahler's clod-hopping Ländler rhythms. played the famous funeral march, drawn from the children's rhyme "Frere Jacques" before slipping into Jewish wedding music and letting out some very merry sounds from the eight-man horn section.

Those horns move to their feet in the last pages of the tumultous finale, a treacherous, long movement made more difficult by a tricky repeat that forces the orchestra to reprise the entire main theme in a different, higher key Still, the players stood up to the challenge. Mr. Morlot slowed a little in the middle of this movement, but regained his footing and brought the First in with a blaze of sound and a loud, approving applause. 

With stunning playing like this, who needs a door-busting sale to be truly happy?

Opera Review: Farce, In Any Language

L'heure Espagnole and Gianni Schicchi at Juilliard
by Paul Pelkonen

Costume design for Don Iñigo Gomez in  L'heure Espagnole.
Design and drawing by Vita Tyzkun  © 2011 The Juilliard School.

On Wednesday night, the Juilliard Opera finished their strong season with an unusual pairing of one-act comedies by Ravel and Puccini. Juilliard alumna Keri-Lynn Wilson conducted both operas in razor-sharp performances, expertly played and timed.

Time is at the heart of Ravel's L'heure Espagnole ("The Spanish Hour.") This is the story of an unfaithful clockmaker's wife (Cecilia Hall) who juggles three suitors while her husband is out setting the city clocks each week. This is pure French farce, with two of the would-be lovers hiding themselves in large clocks, while the studly young muleteer (Andreas Andriotis) carries them up and down the stairs.


Ms. Hall shone as Concepción, the young wife who is considering the poet Gonzalve (Daniel T. Curran) and the banker Don Iñigo Gomez (Alexander Hajek) who finds himself locked in his clock. The opera was lightly played, with crisp ensemble singing and a tight account of Ravel's intricate score.

This fine cast switched places for Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, with Mr. Hajek taking the title role. He made a brash, memorable Schicchi, with good comic acting and a commanding presence. He made Schicchi's ode to Florence (where he warns the gathered relatives of the perils of their scheme to rewrite the will of the deceased Buoso Donati) the emotional heart of the piece, displaying a fine lyric baritone laced with poisonous wit. And the idea of having Schicchi cue the light changes and set the scene? Perfect.


The Korean soprano Jung van Noon, a student of the great Renata Scotto, made a stellar impression as Lauretta. Her "O mio babbino caro" was sung with such melting beauty that half the audience (not knowing where the piece ended) applauded early. She made the prospect of throwing herself into the Arno River a realistic one, arching into the high phrases and pouring out the heartfelt emotion that is required for convincing Puccini.

Schicchi and daughter were surrounded by a memorable group of players. Daniel T. Curran was Rinuccio, Lauretta's suitor and the one good egg in the rotten Donati basket. Timothy Beenken and Carla Jablonski were strong as Simone and La Cieca, the oldest members of the family with their sights set on the biggest shares of the estate. The other members of he company gave good comic performances, including a brief, hilarious cameo by character tenor Said Pressley as the hapless Doctor.

Andreas Aroditis returned as the notary Amantio, a shady figure in leather and aviators. As appropriate for this modern-dress program, he was flanked by two straight-outta-Brooklyn witnesses: Pinnelino "the cobbler"(Drew Santini) and Guccio "The Dyer" (Philip Stoddard. This comic trio upped the level of humor and intensity. As this comic confection whirled to a close, the audience was cheerfully prepared to forgive the hell-bound Gianni Schicchi for his schemes. And with singing like this, why not?

Concert Review: The Rose Lines of...Vienna?

Daniele Gatti conducts the Orchestre National de France

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. Photo © Guy Vivien

Sunday afternoon at Avery Fisher Hall featured a concert by the Orchestre National de France, which rang down the curtain on this year's Symphonic Masters series sponsored by Lincoln Center itself. The concert saw the French orchestra offering a unique perspective on German music. Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto was paired with the dancing waltz rhythms of Richard Strauss and Maurice Ravel. Daniele Gatti conducted.

The concert opened with the Beethoven, switching the normal order of putting the short piece (Ravel's La valse) first and the concerto second. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet played the solo part with great intensity of attack, making a staccato entry in the first movement and taing a relentless approach to Beethoven's cadenzas.

In this opening movement, M. Bavouzet  kept his foot off the pedal, preferring to let the notes jump from his fingers. He played with great dexterity if not especial warmth. It was as if he chose to take all of Beethoven's inspiration and hone it to a single keen point.


The performance was more lyrical in the next two movements: the laid-back Largo and the lilting Rondo. M. Bavouzet's tone also mellowed in the slow movement, sweeping through Beethoven's challenging cadenzas and playing with a somewhat sweeter tone.

Mr. Gatti provided skilled, if not especially distinguished accompaniment, letting M. Bavouzet dominate the proceedings. If the ONF has a distinctive section, it is in their woodwinds. The French bassoons (most American orchestras use the German Heckel models) provides a different timbre to these ears, a rich, ruby sound that complements the strings and warm brass.

The orchestra doubled in size for the Suite from Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, twenty minutes of potpurri from the German composer's popular comic opera. The problem with playing these exceprts was two-fold. By eliminating the voice, the silvered, lyric quality of a soprano (or mezzo) soaring over Strauss' scintillating orchestration is lost. (An English or French horn does not cut it, no matter how beautifully it is played.) Mr. Gatti also struggled to bring his band to a ribald, Viennese climax--but the overall effect was one of politeness and competence.

The musicians looked and sounded a lot happier playing La valse, Maurice Ravel's 1919 ballet score. It was with this piece that the potential and power of this French orchestra finally barrelled forth. La valse is a less famous cousin of Bolero, with more musical development as it surges to a fortissimo climax.

Of M*A*S*H and Motivation

Charles Emerson Winchester III, played by David Ogden Stiers.
Image © 1980 20th Century Fox Television/CBS.

I woke up early this a.m. and flipped on a re-run of M*A*S*H*. And I caught what happens to be the best music-related episode of that long-running series.

The episode, "Morale Victory" is from the show's eighth season, right before the decline of the later seasons. And it features my favorite character on the show, Major Charles Emerson Winchester III, the classical music-loving Boston surgeon, played by David Ogden Stiers in the later seasons of the show.

This also happened to be the first episode I saw as an 11pm re-run in 1985, starting a life-long love affair with the show. M*A*S*H became a bed-time ritual for many years. In the dark days following the September 11, daytime re-runs of the show provided familiarity, comfort, and that all-important sense of time passing in a world numbed with shock.

Winchester operates on Pvt. David Sheridan's leg and injured right hand. He saves the leg, restoring full mobility, but the injury causes ever damage to three fingers on his hand. Problem is this soldier is a concert pianist, and feels that he has has now lost his ability to play music.

The pianist Paul Wittgenstein.

Charles brings his patient to the Officer's Club and its rickety old piano. He presents him with sheet music: the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, written by Maurice Ravel for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm in World War I. Private Sheridan is reluctant at first, but Winchester persuades him to play:

"Don’t you see? Your hand may be stilled, but your gift cannot be silenced if you refuse to let it be... The gift does not lie in your hands. I have hands, David. Hands that can make a scalpel sing. More than anything in my life I wanted to play, but I do not have the gift. I can play the notes, but I cannot make the music.

"You have performed Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Chopin. Even if you never do so again, you’ve already known a joy that I will never know as long as I live. Because the true gift is in your head and in your heart and in your soul.

"Now you can shut it off forever, or you can find new ways to share your gift with the world--through the baton, the classroom, or the pen. As to these works, they’re for you, because you and the piano will always be as one."

Despite the piano being old and beaten up, the beauty of Ravel's music comes through, and the young man discovers that he hasn't lost his gift.

In the last scene, Charles is back in the Swamp having a brandy. Hawkeye and BJ come in and tell him he missed a great party--the clambake that the two doctors spent the rest of the episode organizing. He answers.

"Each of us must dance to his own tune."