Lighten up, you might say.
Well, the Cincinnati Symphony
Orchestra's first concert of the new year Friday night at Music Hall was more
mind-blowing and midwinter than merry, with lots of dark tone colors and food
for thought.
Music director Paavo Järvi has a flair for programming.
Returning after two months guest conducting in Europe, he offered his listeners
a program whose sum equaled more than its parts, with a performance that was
over the top.
Sibelius' Symphony No. 4, Berg's Violin Concerto and
Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet" might seem randomly chosen. On closer
inspection, however, their inter-relationships are extraordinary. Sibelius'
Fourth (1911), which was written on the cusp of the "modern" age, musically
speaking, marked the farthest point he would go toward the harmonic revolution
of the 20th-century, with lots of harmonic ambiguity and virtually no "melody,"
as such.
On top of that, it's a very serious, not to say gloomy, work,
having been written during a dark period in Sibelius' life (he expected to die
at any time, having just had surgery for throat cancer).
Berg's Concerto,
radiantly performed by Dutch violinist Isabelle van Keulen, bends in the
opposite direction. The Austrian composer, a chief exponent of the so-called
"12-tone," freely "dissonant" system that shattered 300 years of key-centered
harmony, was a master at making his music sound tonal. Berg's concerto, "To the
Memory of An Angel," also dwells on death, having been dedicated to Manon
Gropius, a friend's daughter, who died of polio at 18. His last completed work,
it became, in fact, Berg's own requiem and contains cryptic references to the
women he loved, including an illegitimate daughter whom he came to identify with
Manon.
Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet," while securely situated among
the all-time favorite classical works, is of course, based on a great tale of
love and death. As such, it fit the death-related theme of the concert
perfectly.
Sibelius' Fourth is the least popular of his symphonies and
regularly challenges audiences. It did Friday, though not for lack of a splendid
performance. The grave Adagio set the tone, with its chocolaty strings and
gleaming, incisive brass. Järvi gave emphasis to the tripping woodwinds in the
scherzo, a lighter moment among the persistent tritones and snarly
horns.
The symphony gave birth to a gorgeous, impassioned theme in the
Largo, but only after five tortuous tries. The glints of glockenspiel in the
finale were a bit of light in the darkness along with the "heroic" flourishes in
winds and brass. The work ends mezzo-forte on a repeated major chord, as if
Sibelius had run out of steam. The audience "got it," however, and applauded
promptly.
Van Keulen brought Manon Gropius vividly to life in the
concerto. The two movements are programmatic, the first a reminiscence of her
beauty and character, the second a portrayal of her illness and death. Van
Keulen matched her tone and expression to each episode, flighty and cheerful in
the first, plucky and aggressive in the second, serenely resigned at the end,
where Berg quotes a Bach chorale. The enigmatic folk song woven into both
movements (hardly Bachian with its risque text) had a mysterious feel, and van
Keulen tied it all up in a performance as narrative as it was nimble. Kudos to
visiting tubist Christopher Olka for some wonderful solos.
Järvi made
sheer drama out of the Tchaikovsky. I have rarely heard a performance so full of
contrast, painfully slow, almost morose at the beginning, an oasis of peace in
the tender love scene. The strife of the Montagues and Capulets was savagely
drawn, making the threnody at the end that much more effective.
Repeat is
8 p.m. tonight at Music Hall.
(first published in The
Cincinnati Post Jan. 13, 2007.)