Postcards from New York - The Metropolitan Opera

Is there a more difficult job than running a major opera house? Minutes before the curtain was supposed to rise for the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Turandot, General Director Peter Gelb walked on stage and informed the audience that the stage machinery for the opera’s complex set had jammed, and that the performance would be “semi-staged”, which meant only a single set would be used throughout the evening. Refunds would be offered to anyone who wanted it. Quite a few in the audience did rise and walked out. My wife and I decided to stay, and were treated to a truly great performance of Puccini’s final masterpiece, musically as well as dramatically.

 

Turandot is an opera of extremes – from music of the utmost brutality that foreshadows Bartok and Stravinsky, to arias and ensembles so beautiful that makes our goosebumps stand erect. It does take an exceptional conductor to hold together all these elements and make the performance convincing. Conductor Oksana Lyniv conducted a fluid performance of the opera, holding together all the disparate elements in the score. I did find that she was more convincing in the more lyrical parts of the score, with the more dramatic, even brutal, elements of the music somewhat underplayed. Nevertheless, the final result was a performance that moved, even without Franco Zeffirelli’s famously over-the-top sets. The great MET orchestra was in fine shape indeed, with great playing in every department of the composer’s complex score, and the chorus was truly a glory of this great house.

 

I am happy to report that great singing is alive and well at the MET. SeoJong Back’s Calaf was dramatically convincing as well as musically vibrant. Amazing, Mr. Back began his musical journey as a baritone and “became”a tenor only later on! He has an ease in tone production that was beautiful as well as unforced – and the famous Nessun Dorma was indeed convincingly delivered, well-paced and with an effortless high B. After the well-deserved bravos, the conductor called for the aria to be encored. I did find his second delivery a little less convincing, because I had the feeling that he was trying a little too hard to top that first performance. Encores in opera, in spite of its long tradition, is something I never understood - one would never imagine, or expect, a repeat of the “To be or not to be” soliloquy in Hamlet.

 

Elena Pankratova’s Turandot was equally impressive, and she indeed rose to Puccini’s incredible vocal demands and sailed above the orchestral textures. Dramatically, she was convincing in her transformation toward the end of the drama. Aleksandra Kurzak nearly stole the show in her portrayal of Liu, with this character’s palpable sense of innocence and vulnerability. The trio of Ping, Pong, Pang – Joo Won Kang, Tony Stevenson and Andrew Stenson –was well-matched as well as well-blended as an ensemble. What was incredible – and I suppose one only hears this in major opera houses – was that the “minor” roles were equally well sung, including a musically and dramatically commanding performance as Timur by Vitalij Kowaljow, as well as Carlo Bosi as a convincing Emperor Altoum. 

 

In the end, this “semi-staged” presentation of Turandot indeed overcame the limitations of the lack of lavish sets, turning out to be a moving musical as well as theatrical experience. 

 

The next evening, we returned for the house’s new production of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, an opera that is always difficult to stage because of the many and improbabilities and “coincidences” in the story. I was greatly anticipating the performance, as it was conducted by music director and “star” conductor, Canada’s own Yannick Nezet-Seguin.

 

Musically, the performance was of an impressively high level – the orchestra rose to Verdi’s demands under Nezet-Seguin, and the singers all delivered unimpeachable performances. 

 

Brian Jagde was vocally spectacular as Don Alvaro, with a beautiful, emotive voice as clear as a clarion call. He was well-matched, vocally and dramatically, by Igor Golovatenko’s Don Carlo di Vargas, both individually as well as in their many ensemble moments. 

 

I always find it incredible that as an agnostic, Verdi was able to write the most beautiful and reverential religious music, such as Donna Leonora’s prayer for guidance in Act One, her plea to enter religious life and the subsequent apparition of the Virgin Mary in Act Two, the music of the pilgrims in the same act, as well as her forgiveness in Act Four. I was convinced and greatly moved by Elena Stikhina’s performance and reverence with which she delivered these crucial moments in the drama. As in Turandot, the smaller roles were vocally and dramatically equally magnificent. The fortune teller Preziosilla was one of the evening’s highlights, wonderfully acted and sung by Maria Barakova that was truly show-stopping. 

 

Director Mariusz Trelinski updated the opera to a contemporary setting, with the story being set in an unnamed city and country. After the accidental death of the general, we were told, the country was plunged into a devastating war. Here is where the set was transformed into a sort of post-apocalyptic landscape.

 

I think in updating any opera, one has to ask the question of whether such a change would serve the score, enhance the drama, or make it more logical. In this case, I would say that it does not. Although the emotions on display are indeed universal – love, hate, jealousy, etcetera – the code of behaviour is very much of an earlier time. To have the drama set in a modern setting would make this code of behaviour illogical. 

 

I am quite aware that we live in a post-Christian, or even anti-Christian age, but whatever the personal belief of the director, art should not be used to reflect his or her personal bias for or against anything. In Act II, when Leonora was imploring the Father Superior to allow her to enter religious life, the two characters displayed a physical closeness that is out of order and illogical between penitent and religious. Later on, before Guardiano allowed her to remain in the monastery’s hermitage, Guardiano inexplicably slapped her in the face. During Leonora’s initiation rite, when she was passing among the friars to the hermitage, she was surrounded by this group of friars, and the friars were flogging her using some form of a whip. The entire image, the message, of this image, suggests something abnormal, even sinister. No Catholic religious order ever had such an initiation rite.

 

The production made very effective use of both foreground and back projections, and the apparition of the Virgin Mary could have been done very effectively. However, the image of the Virgin Mary projected looks more like some sort of new age deity – with red lipsticks – nothing like any image of the Virgin Mary I had ever seen. Were these the director’s deliberate efforts to disparage the Church? Whatever his motives were, it was downright inappropriate, if not deliberately insulting to the Catholic Church. If Verdi, as an agnostic, could write convincing, even reverential, religious music, could the director not at least show respect to the creator of the work? More importantly, such personal interpretation of the drama does nothing to highlight the genius of the opera, but rather took away the even greater power it could have conveyed. In the case of this production, I think the director’s concept took away the central message of the drama, which in Verdi’s final concept of the opera, is not even how one’s life is bound by the forces of destiny, but the power of forgiveness and redemption, even in the midst of great tragedy. One could argue for a certain concept in the name of artistic licence, but no degree of artistic licence should distort the original intent of the creator.

 

Yannick Nezet-Seguin conducted with great passion, commitment to the score, and a total identification to the Verdi’s idiom. The famous overture was performed with great drama and passion, with great attention to the layering of the instruments, always beautiful brass playing, and gorgeous woodwind playing in the Andantino section, and especially felicitous playing of the clarinet solo in the Allegro brillante section. He is indeed a worthy successor to James Levine, who had done so much to elevate the level of the music-making at the MET. 

 

In spite of my reservation about the staging of the opera, the performance remained one that was impregnable. It was indeed a treat to have the privilege to hear such great singing and playing, including again the great MET chorus, all under the direction of one of today’s major conductors.

 

I am already starting to save for our next outing to the Big Apple.

 

 

 

Postcards from New York - New York Philharmonic

 What a joy it is to hear the New York Philharmonic in the new Wu Tsai Theatre in the David Geffen Hall! I remember hearing the orchestra in the 1980’s, and how dead the acoustics used to be. Now the sound is so much warmer, allowing one to hear the details in the orchestral colours. I am happy that the latest renovations of this problematic hall finally yielded good results.

 

Last night, music director Jaap van Zweden conducted a performance of extremely well-known works, which posed for both conductor and musicians the challenge of bringing new ideas and excitement to these very familiar pieces of music.

 

The concert began with a splendid reading of Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides Overture (Fingal’s Cave), Op. 26. This poetic tone painting received an evocative, colourful performance, with truly outstanding playing from all the players of the Philharmonic. The many subtle shifts in colours and harmonies were beautifully handled by van Zweden and the orchestra. 

 

Conrad Tao joined the musicians of the orchestra in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major, K. 453. Tao, a much extroverted player, gave us big-boned Mozart, drawing a bright, brilliant sound from the piano. Tao may be pianistically impeccable, but he was a little too aggressive in how he approached the concerto. Perhaps this is his 21^st century view of Mozart, but I must admit that while I can appreciate his pianism, his playing more egoistic. I also listened in vain for a more spiritual dimension in his music-making.

 

Conductor and orchestra were sympathetic partners for Tao. The conductor served as a more classical foil to the soloist’s more aggressive interpretation of the concerto. Van Zweden blended the wind colours of the opening of the second movement truly beautifully, and the orchestra played the jaunty third movement with lovely attention to details, especially in phrasing. I was more impressed with Tao in his playing of his first encore, the pianist’s own transcription of Art Tatum’s “take” on Over the Rainbow. This performance showcased the young artist’s considerable pianistic chops. His playing of The Fairy Garden from Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, his second encore, was very well played indeed, although I did find pianist Charles Richard Hamelin more idiomatic in his interpretation of the same work in a recital he gave in Vancouver. Again, I found Tao’s playing of the Ravel much too aggressive for the delicate colours of this work. 

 

Is there any piece of music that is part of our collective consciousness than Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67? Its all-too-familiar opening motif has been heard in anything from commercial jingles to cell phone ringtones. That said, when the work is performed with commitment by a great orchestra, the power and startling originality of the work can still come through, as they did last evening. 

 

Jaap van Zweden led the orchestra in a reading of the Beethoven that was taut, forward-moving, and architecturally tight. It was such a pleasure to hear the weight and the full tone of the string sounds. I appreciated van Zweden tempo choices for each movement - with emphasis on the con brio of the 1^stmovement, and the con moto of the second – as well as the very logical tempo relationship between movements. In the second movement, the conductor paid great attention to details of the phrasing, especially in the phrase ending of the main theme. The transition of the 3^rd movement to the glorious C Major arrival of the 4^thmovement was beautifully paced and tension-filled.

 

Yes, Beethoven’s 5^th symphony can still “work” when it is a truly a great and committed performance. When one thinks that there is always someone in the audience who might be hearing the performance for the first time, we must appreciate the dedication and commitment of the musicians of the New York Philharmonic for making this iconic piece of music come alive once again. 

 

Last evening’s concert marked the beginning of a series of concerts in the next few months that would conclude van Zweden’s relatively brief tenure with the orchestra. Star conductor Gustavo Dudamel will then take over the music directorship of the orchestra, ending his association with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. So far, Dudamel seems to be able to do no wrong, at least in the eyes of the critics. I could not help but notice that Dudamel will be following the same path as former music director Zubin Mehta. Will the New York critics be just as cruel to Dudamel, as they certainly were to Mehta? I guess time will tell. For now, I would say that the orchestra has been in good hands under van Zweden, and the audience’s cheers and bravos were certainly a tribute to the memorable performance he and the orchestra gave yesterday.

 

 

Artist at Work

What a joy it is to hear the piano being played so lovingly, and so achingly beautifully, as it was last evening with Rafal Blechacz, his fourth recital appearance in Vancouver under the auspices of the Vancouver Chopin Society.

 

I had the privilege of hearing Mr. Blechacz on various occasions, and had always enjoyed his performances. This time, I was utterly and completely moved, indeed overwhelmed, by his artistry and musicality, as well as the palpable spirituality of his interpretations. 

 

The way he played the piano transcended the instrument, and what one hears are sounds of music, heavenly music.

 

With the first simple notes of the Nocturne in F minor, Op. 55, No. 1, the audience was drawn into his very intimate and personal sound world. Indeed, throughout the evening, I felt that we were invited by the artistry to share in the communion of music-making, and that is a great gift indeed. Blechacz had an acute sense of balancing the horizontal and vertical aspects of the music; the music was never driven, but rather floated forward.

 

Chopin’s early Mazurkas, Op. 6, presents some daunting technical and musical challenges for any pianists; needless to say, Blechacz towered above any technical difficulties inherent in the score. In these works, Blechacz conveyed and celebrated the joy of the young composer, almost reveling in the fecundity of his creative genius. 

 

The first half of the recital ended with four large works. In the Polonaise-Fantasie, Op. 61, he so skillfully delineated the complex contrapuntal web so inherent in the composer’s late works, resulting in a truly masterful interpretation of this, arguably Chopin’s greatest work, a work that, because of its seemingly fragmentary nature, can sometimes come out sounding disjointed and meaningless. Not so with Blechacz’s performance, where every note, every chord, every inflection, every pregnant pause (and there were many of them), and every phrase were charged with emotion and meaning. More importantly, he conveyed, more than many pianists I have heard in a long time, the utter tragedy and heartbreak, combined with a feeling of a final defiance, of the drama unfolding.

 

He continued with a spirited but incredibly musical reading of the famous Polonaise in A Major, Op. 40, No. 1, and a suitably dark and brooding performance of the lesser-known Polonaise in C minor, Op. 40, No. 2. The first half ended with a performance of the Polonaise in A-flat Major, Op. 53, that made one wanted to shout, “Viva Poland!” That said, these performances of Chopin’s rousing polonaises were not merely exciting, but tremendously moving and hauntingly beautiful. 

 

The second half of the recital began with a performance of Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque that made me think of the composer’s statement that he wished for a piano without hammers. Blechacz’s playing of these four pieces were simply magical. His timing in the Prelude gave it an almost improvisatory quality, and in the Menuet and Passepied, there was a quickness, delicacy and lightness that simply took my breath away. The justly famous Clair de Lune was played with infinite shades of pianissimos. Words cannot describe the truly mesmerizing beauty of the performance was.

 

In Mozart’s Sonata in A Major, K. 331, Blechacz presented the work with highly expressive playing and, while always maintaining the structural integrity of the work, he was not afraid to take time with certain phrases, or inject slight pauses to emphasize a point. Perhaps some might find his interpretation too “romantic”, but I found it completely valid and convincing. It was also the most “bubbly”, and infectiously joyful, playing of the Rondo all Turca I have heard in a long time.

 

It is difficult to pinpoint the style of Karol Szymanowski’s music. While there is an indebtedness to Chopin, he has very much his own unique voice in his creations. Blachacz gave a truly splendid and totally committed reading of the composer’s Variations in B-flat minor, Op. 3, bringing out both the lyrical aspects of the composer’s writing, but also the late-romantic harmonic colours of the early 20^th century. Blechacz highlighted the characteristic of each variation, but also managed to inject a real sense of cohesion and logic throughout the entire opus.

 

After a well-deserved ovation from the nearly sold-out house, Blechacz graciously granted two encores – Chopin’s pensive Mazurka in A minor, Op. 17, No. 4, and his charming miniature masterpiece, the Prelude in A Major, Op. 28, No. 7, confirming my belief that while there are many great pianists today, there are really far fewer who can really capture the spirit of Chopin. Blechacz is of course one of today’s great pianists, but he is, without a doubt, a musician that gets into the heart and soul of the composer, and we were witnesses to a performance that was truly a testament to his commitment to conveying the absolutely unique genius of Chopin.

 

How privileged we were last evening, to be given a glimpse into the continuing artistic evolution of this most gifted young artist. I certainly look forward to his next visit to Vancouver, where he would no doubt move us once more with his musicality and unique insights into whatever he chooses to play.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Symphony at the Chan

Pianist Eric Lu made his concerto debut with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and conductor Earl Lee this past Saturday. Lu, a laureate of the 2015 International Chopin Competition (at age18) and gold medalist of the 2018 Leeds International Piano Competition (at age 20), had already made a highly successful recital debut in Vancouver under the auspices of The Vancouver Chopin Society. So it was with eager anticipation that I attended the weekend’s concerto featuring Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor. The venue was not the orchestra’s home in the Orpheum Theatre, but (thankfully) the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts.

 

From the pensive opening chords of the 1^st movement, and throughout the performance, I constantly thought how Lu’s playing harkens us back to pianists of the past – figures like Lipatti, Cortot, and Edwin Fischer – not that his playing resembles any of them stylistically, but in the individuality of his style and musicality of his playing as well as the sense that he was putting musical concerns far above the work’s formidable technical challenges. 

 

In the same aforementioned opening chords, he struck a perfect balance between the vertical and the horizontal, making each chord floats, but at the same time propelling the music forward. In the orchestral exposition, he managed to subsume the piano figuration within the orchestral texture. His tone was always beautiful, never forced, even in the more bravura passages. In the A-flat Major Andante espressivo section, when the piano plays with as well as “accompanies” the clarinet, Lu played this theme with melting tenderness that was palpably moving. In Schumann’s written-out cadenza, Lu played with a combination of musicality and bravura. 

 

The gracefully and intimately played Intermezzo served as the perfect bridge between the 1^st and 3^rd movements. In final movement, Lu really threw caution to the wind, and the result was a performance that was overwhelmingly joyful, even exultant. For such a young man to play with such depth of feeling as well as maturity that is far beyond his years, is truly a remarkable feat. 

 

Under Earl Lee, the orchestra sounded fabulous, with a warmth of sound that one does not always hear in the Orpheum. This is a notoriously difficult concerto to conduct, and the young conductor was at one with Lu from beginning to end.

 

After intermission, Earl Lee led the orchestra in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F Major, the composer’s paean to the glories of nature. It was a performance that was impeccably paced and played, with a cohesiveness and a uniformity in structure rather than a series of charming episodes.

 

I appreciated how Lee brought out the colours of the woodwinds throughout the work, not only in the solos but within the orchestral texture, somewhat like a meticulously tinged watercolour. I thought that Julia Lockhart’s bassoon playing was especially outstanding on Saturday evening. In the second movement, Lee managed to maintain the flow (pun intended) of the Szene am Bach, without getting bogged down by every detail of the melody; the oft-repeated main theme was also given an infinite variety of colours, and a feeling of renewal every time it returns. 

 

Lee took the Lustiges Zusammensein der Landleute at a perfectly energetic pace, and the liveliness of this country dance – with the horn player who kept coming in at the “wrong” place – was very much kept alive from start to finish. The transition from the third movement to the fourth and then the final movement was expertly handled indeed. 

 

In the Hirtengesang, there was a palpable sense of thanksgiving, of wonder, as well as a feeling of benediction. After the performance, Lee was all-too-ready to acknowledge the members of the orchestra for their outstanding contribution in the performance.

 

We have Earl Lee and Eric Lu to thank for this evening of beauty. 

 

Let’s hope these wonderful artists return to Vancouver soon and share their artistry with our audience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mourning Seiji Ozawa

In the wake of the turmoil and terror of the 1960’s, the British-Hong Kong government launched the 1^st Hong Kong Arts Festival in 1973 to improve the cultural life of the city. This was when I first encountered Seiji Ozawa, one of the featured performers, conducting the New Japan Philharmonic. No, I did not attend any of his concerts, but somehow, I saw his picture on the festival brochure. My first reaction was, “This doesn’t look like a symphony conductor.”

 

It was only much later, that I realized that underneath the cool and “hip” image – the designer shirts he always wore, and the hippy beads that were part of his wardrobe at one time - he always conveyed, was a deeply serious musician and thinker, and one of the truly great conductors of the 20^th century. 

I try to imagine the courage it took for young Ozawa to board the freighter bound for Europe, taking the first steps of a musical journey that, with his talent and determination, eventually took him to every musical capital of the world. 

 

To my eternal regret, I have never attended a live performance by Seiji Ozawa. But thanks to those glory days of PBS, I was able to watch many of Ozawa’s Boston performances in the series aptly titled, “Evening at Symphony”. There are, of course, his extensive discography, performances with the Toronto Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Boston Symphony, Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic and, in his later years, the Saito Kinen Orchestra, which he founded – a truly glistening list of great orchestras.

 

Ozawa’s close friend, composer and conductor John Williams says, “From a composer’s point of view, there are two types of conductors: the first will offer less than what your ‘inner ear’ imagined the music to be, and the second will infuse the music with a beauty that is beyond what you have imagined. Clearly, Seiji belongs to the much smaller second group.”

 

However, the talent of Ozawa did not preclude the malice of the critics’ pen. There has been a singular narrative in critical circles that refuses to admit Ozawa into the first rank of “great musicians”. Perhaps because of his Asian heritage, there had been comments about whether he really “felt” the music. In Boston, his musical home base for 29 seasons, reviews by critics like Richard Dyer had invariably been scathing. Towards the end of his tenure in Boston, even a few of his fellow orchestra musicians had their knives out for his departure. A musician who, thankfully, would remain unnamed, makes this insulting statement, “[Seiji] can memorize a menu, a telephone book, perhaps even King Lear, but he wouldn’t understand the poetry of the composition” – a statement the betrays the prejudice he had had to face in his years as a musician.

 

No, it is the opinions of his fellow musicians that I tend to trust, his friends and close colleagues – Peter Serkin, Rudolf Serkin, Kent Nagano, Jessye Norman, Yo-Yo Ma, Isaac Stern, Evgeny Kissin, Krystian Zimerman, Itzhak Perlman, Leonard Bernstein, Andre Previn, to really name just a few – loves to play and collaborate with him, and counted him as their close friend. 

 

His closest musical friend and comrade-in-arms was perhaps the late, great cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, who had met his share of great musicians and composers, writes after their initial encounter, “When I came back to Moscow, I said to Shostakovich, ‘Remember that name – Seiji Ozawa. For certain you will hear again about him.” The great cellist continues, “You are one of the best soldiers of music I have ever met in my life. I embrace you and I bow down before you, my dear, irreplaceable friend.”

 

Pianist and teacher Peter Serkin, whom Ozawa had known and mentored since his youth, movingly writes, “Rather than using music to project and further himself, Seiji takes a more humble route; he works to make himself a worthy vessel for the music and the composer.”

 

To talk about Ozawa’s great recordings would require a book-length article. One can think of his ground-breaking and still astounding recording of Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, a disc that really put the Canadian orchestra on the musical map. Then there is his electrifying Le Sacre du printemps with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. His very moving performance of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, which some think of as his best recording with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Of course, the long list of recordings with his beloved Boston orchestra include some truly fine performances – a beautiful Faure disc, his Mahler cycle, Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. His many fine recordings with the Saito Kinen Orchestra – also deserve much greater critical acknowledgment. 

 

During his tenure at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Ozawa commissioned a total of 44 compositions. From his earliest days as conductor, he has been a dream conductor for contemporary composers. He was Messiaen’s own choice as conductor for his massive opera St. Francis of Assisi, which he rehearsed and conducted without a score. When he was reviewing a new work by composer Peter Lieberson, the young composer was impressed about how well he had studied the new score; it was as if the conductor is guiding the creator through his own composition.

To get a sense of Ozawa as a human being, one must be grateful to author Haruki Murakami for his recent volume, Absolutely on Music - Conversations with Seiji Ozawa. What comes across in reading these extended conversations is a humble man utterly devoted to his art, and without a trace of vanity or self-glorification. 

 

No talent, no matter how great, cannot be immune to old age and illness. Seiji Ozawa had suffered from cancer and various health challenges in his later years. Most recently, a wheelchair-bound and extremely frail-looking Ozawa conducted the Saito Kinen Orchestra in Beethoven’s Egmont Overture. At the end of the performance, the great conductor was overwhelmed and moved to tears by the greatness of the music. 

 

Today’s classical musicians seem to focus much on career and image. Music has, unfortunately, become a commodity to be exploited by managers and record companies. Ozawa himself was often surprised at the excitement he generates when he walks into a room. For him, it was the music, and nothing else, that really mattered. 

 

I will miss Seiji Ozawa very much. May he Rest in Peace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two Expressions of Love in Seattle

This past Thursday’s Seattle Symphony Orchestra concert featured two very different expressions of love – David Robertson’s Light Forming a Piano Concerto, a “love letter” written for his wife Orli Shaham, the piano soloist of the evening, and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor, who’s ethereal Adagietto movement is, according to conductor Willem Mengelberg, an ardent love letter for the composer’s wife Alma. 

 

It is difficult to judge a complex new work without the score or any prior knowledge about the work of the composer. David Robertson, who was also conductor of the evening’s performance, wrote in the programme notes that he composed the work with his wife’s formidable pianistic and musical abilities in mind. Certainly, the concerto poses incredible technical hurdles for any pianist who attempts it. The three movements of the work, played without pause, takes the audience through a gamut of moods and emotions. From the restless opening movement (“the uncertain music of their voices”), to the slow movement (“amphorae of the heart”) that obviously forms the emotional core of the entire work, and to the joyous final movement (“Resounding to joy”), Shaham was in complete technical and musical command of the Olympian challenges her husband laid down in this work. The soloist was also very aware of the many interplays between piano and the instruments of the orchestra, especially the horns and bassoon. The middle movement, given a deeply felt performance by Shaham, was indeed a sort of chamber music, with much dialogue between pianist and the orchestral musicians. In spite of the large orchestra the work calls for, Robertson managed to always maintain a clarity of texture, both for the hardworking soloist and in the orchestra texture.

 

It is difficult for us to imagine that there was a time when the music of Gustav Mahler was found to be strange, vulgar, and downright incomprehensible. Mahler’s time indeed has come, and this enthusiasm does not seem to be going away, as any performance of a Mahler symphony would form the highlight of any orchestra’s season. Last evening, Robertson and the musicians of the orchestra offered us the composer’s Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor, in a performance that left me emotionally overwhelmed. 

 

In the funeral march of the opening movement, Robertson kept up the pace of the march, which resulted in a frightening stillness in the music. Even with the massiveness of the sound, there was always a transparency of texture, and the entire movement was wonderfully paced, with the sound carefully gauged such that the listener felt that there is still something in reserve. The seating arrangement of the string section, with the first and second violins seated on opposite sides of the stage, also gave a different perspective to the texture of the polyphony. There was truly stellar trumpet playing last evening, especially from principal trumpet David Gordon, whose sound really formed the palette of the sonic landscape throughout the symphony.

 

My only reservation is that the final two triplet figures, played by muted trumpets, did not have more of a far-away, almost disappearing quality to them; as well, the final pizzicato C-sharp by the violas, celli and basses, could have had much more vehemence. 

 

The gigantic rondo which forms the second movement – Mit grosser Vehemenz – was indeed that. There was some truly spectacular playing from all the members of the orchestra. In the long cello recitative based on the main March theme, the orchestra’s cellists played with a palpable depth of feeling that was deeply touching. 

 

In the Scherzo, I have some reservations about the lightness of the sound, a lack of a sense of weight, a pesante as well as dunkel quality in the sound and a little lacking in the cohesion of the logic. Perhaps the conductor’s desire for transparency of texture carried over into this movement? That said, the movement was splendidly played by members of the orchestra, with truly virtuosic playing by principal horn Jeffrey Fair. The pacing of the second Trio, the dialogue between the obligato horn and the celli, leading to a hushed passage by a magically played pizzicato strings, and then a nostalgic waltz, was well paced indeed.

 

The Seattle Symphony strings played the justly famous Adagietto with a great beauty of sound and sensitivity. Even though the composer marked this movement Sehr langsam, conductors have taken this movement in a range of tempi. Robertson took the music in a somewhat moderate tempo, and paced the movement well, not pushing it to its emotional edge, but letting the music unfolds naturally, and always taking care to maintain the flow of the music. 

 

From the almost rustic opening of the Rondo-Finale to the triumphal brass chorale that ends the movement, Robertson inspired the orchestra to a totally committed, rousing performance, bringing us in the emotional journey from utter tragedy in the beginning to its life-affirming, joyous conclusion. It was not the heart-on-sleeve, hyper-emotional Mahler advocated by Leonard Bernstein, but one that presents the masterful architecture of the composer’s design, as well as a performance that touches our emotions with its sonic splendor and depth of feeling. The end result is a performance that I found deeply moving. The sounds of this majestic symphony resounded in my mind during the long trip back to Vancouver.

 

Robertson is a thoughtful conductor with deep insights into the music, who invites (often with a smile) rather than commands the musicians to contribute in the collective act of music-making. There was obviously wonderful chemistry between orchestra and conductor. I am quite aware that the orchestra is going through a search for a new music director. Judging from last evening’s performance, I do not think they could do any better than David Robertson.

 

 

Vancouver Symphony Season Opener with Yo Yo Ma

Cellist Yo Yo Ma made a flying visit to Vancouver to open the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s 105^thconcert season. 

 

The orchestra wisely placed Ma’s performance at the second half of the concert, so there was a great feeling of anticipation when Ma finally stepped onto the stage of the Orpheum Theatre for a performance of the Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104. 

 

In a sleepless night after the concert where the sounds of Ma’s cello kept playing in my mind, I pondered what it is that makes Ma such a compelling artist. 

 

Unlike cellists such as Rostropovich and Maisky, Ma doesn’t produce a big bold sound from his instrument. What drew listeners, and members of the orchestra that played with him last evening, is a high personal, emotion-filled, intimate, even confiding tone that he produces on the cello. He has reached a point in his music-making that it isn’t even sounds that he makes on his instrument, but an endless range of emotions, with Dvorak’s notes as the medium. It was a highly personal approach to this very familiar concerto that would sound disjointed and illogical under the wrong hands, but somehow, Ma was able to infuse his performance into an organic whole.

 

I believe that Yo Yo Ma belongs to that very select group of artists who, in spite of the fame and adulation, never lost the sense of wonder about music, or the sense of privilege in making music. During the performance, he was evidently listening to members of the orchestra, making eye contact with them, almost cajoling them to join him in this act recreating something incredibly beautiful. I am certain that Ma has played this work countless times, but he was somehow able to make it sound fresh and spontaneous. 

 

In the second movement, a lament to the death of Dvorak’s sister-in-law and the true love of his life, Ma certainly bared his soul, and invited rather than commanded his listeners to enter his innermost thoughts. 

 

I have been attending performances of Mr. Ma since he was a very young artist, and it really has been a privilege to witness his artistic growth, through his performances and many recordings. At this time, one can only hope for many more years of his performing life, so that he can continue to share with us such indelible moments of beauty.