CSO Opener: Chopin Meets "The Warriors:
A rare bird lit on the Music Hall stage in Cincinnati Thursday night.
Though “lit” is too mild a word for Percy Grainger’s massive “The Warriors, Music to an Imaginary Ballet.” Assembled on the Music Hall stage were three grand pianos (the minimum specified in the score), a bar piano, celeste, two harps, a raft of mallet and other percussion instruments (ten players) and a full orchestra numbering over 100.
Led by guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero – with a little help from conductors Robert Treviño and William White – this rarely performed work by the Australian-born composer shared the program with Chopin, Elgar and Weber.
Guest artist in her CSO debut was Olga Kern, gold medalist in the 2001 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Kern’s performance of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor captivated the audience, blending arresting virtuosity with exquisite musicality. Working hand in glove with Guerrero (music director of the Nashville Symphony), she delivered an essay in romanticism that took one’s breath away.
The quality of her sound was everywhere apparent, whether intoning a simple melody or one wreathed in the eloquent figuration characteristic of Chopin. The opening Allegro maestoso was noble and affecting; the second movement, Romanze: Larghetto, was gently perfumed and full of nuance. Principal bassoonist William Winstead was a standout in the Romanze in his extensive dialogue with the piano. Kern instilled the Vivace finale with spirit, yielding a performance that was notable for its split-second timing and the close collaboration between soloist and orchestra.
Responding to a hail of “bravas,” Kern presented an encore, Chopin’s exacting Etude in B Minor.
Guerrero opened the second half with Elgar’s “In the South, Alassio” (1933). Written during the composer’s stay in a town in Italy, the twenty-minute tone poem sounds for all the world like Richard Strauss or Gustav Mahler, with its dense orchestral sonorities. There are gentle moments, as in the soft solos for viola, beautifully rendered by principal violist Christian Colberg. Elsewhere, it is big and brash, ending with a brassy fanfare and a hat-in-the-air flourish.
Then it was on to “The Warriors.” Guerrero, who took the work to Carnegie Hall with the Nashville Symphony for the May, 2012 “Spring for Music” festival, led with relish. And he took his audience with him. Indeed, it was for spaces like 3,500-seat Music Hall – too big for some things -- that Grainger’s experimental work was written.
The “imaginary ballet” of the title was apparently just that, Grainger having been approached by conductor Thomas Beecham to compose a ballet score for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Best known today for his English folk song arrangements, Grainger began writing it in London in 1913, but emigrated to the U.S. the next year, where he completed it in 1916. Though no ballet or libretto was ever forthcoming, Grainger wrote it, he said, “to be danceable.” His conception, which clearly has anti- war implications, was of warriors of all times and places, male and female, engaged as much in revelry and lovemaking as combat.
The music is structured using multiple themes, none of folk origin. Midway, the music breaks up into separate instrumental bodies -- the percussion, pianos and harps in the manner of an Indonesian gamelan orchestra and an offstage brass ensemble – who perform against each other in different meters and harmonies, a la Charles Ives. (Hence the need for Treviño and White, associate and assistant conductors of the CSO respectively.)
Eighteen minutes in length, the work begins with a rapid, splashy section announcing the descending principal theme. Oboist Lon Bussell performed bass oboe in a slow middle section, punctuated by pianist Julie Spangler striking her piano strings with marimba mallets and White conducting the percussion/piano ensemble. Later, Treviño left the stage with the brass, who performed snappy military music as the CSO continued onstage under Guerrero at a more mild-mannered pace.
The buildup to the end was pulse-quickening, with the entire assemblage playing full tilt to the seemingly premature cutoff.
The concert opened with Weber’s Overture to “Oberon,” a happy, propulsive work that gave cheerful impetus to the new season.
The concert repeats at 8 p.m. Saturday at Music Hall. Tickets begin at $12. Call (513) 381-3300, or visit www.cincinnatisymphony.org