Reviewing the Weekend in Classical Music

Take Two

Depending on your point of view, Saturday’s Seattle Symphony performance was either excellent or catastrophic. The performance began well enough. Mendelssohn’s youthful Sinfonia No.10 received an spirited and convincing interpretation from both the orchestra and guest conductor Gunter Herbig. The balance among the reduced forces was especially notable.

The orchestra’s balance carried through the evening into Dvorak’s Cello Concerto. Xavier Phillips’ performance was good to be sure. His approach was mannered and focused. Phillips allowed the music to shin rather than weigh it down with too many personal touches. Give him a few years to season and he will be back in Seattle with a warmer performance equal to his rising stardom. The audience gave the performance a well deserved standing ovation. Then again it’s hard to imagine a performance of the Dvorak concerto not getting a standing ovation.

But, it was Herbig and the Symphony’s control of the orchestral part of the concerto that was the most enjoyable. Herbig had an unfaltering knack for shading and dynamics. There was loud and there was soft, but there was also the luscious in-between. He savored Dvorak’s music.

So far, so good.

When the orchestra and Herbig came back to perform Sibelius’ First Symphony the audience probably expected to hear a performance of the Sibelius as finely constructed and played as the first half. It took two tries, but the audience eventually got what they were expecting.

The Sibelius opens with a solo on the clarinet accompanied by timpani. It is a beautiful way to open the work and might remind some of the solo opening to the composer’s Violin Concerto. The stage was set for principal clarinet Christopher Sereque. However, for about thirty seconds Sereque experienced instrument problems that distorted his clarinet’s sound. For Sereque, those disastrous thirty seconds probably felt like a lifetime. The plug was pulled and the symphony was started again.

For any musician, having your instrument malfunction, would be both humbling and embarrassing. The audience snickered, but put any one of them in Sereque’s shoes and let’s see how they do. Once Sereque fixed his problematic instrument, the symphony gave a taut performance more stately than nationalistic. Like earlier in the evening, Herbig paid special attention to the dynamic changes and the details of the piece.

It’s important to note that every so often what happened to Sereque does happen. The mishap on Saturday gives the music life and should have reminded everyone in attendance that classical music, when performed, isn’t an immutable art form but is different with each and every performance. Last year the Cleveland Orchestra rebooted a performance of Alban Berg’s Chamber Concerto and Seattle audiences should remember when Lynn Harrell’s cell phone went off in his pocket during a performance of Strauss’ Don Quixote.

If the calamity with Sereque’s clarinet wasn’t interesting enough, the evening concluded with a scuffle between an elderly woman and a man sitting in front of her. As one person remarked to me afterward, “it’s just like the old days, except people aren’t fighting over the music.”

Chen Yi’s Choice

The Seattle Chamber Players embarked on an Asian music festival with performances at Town Hall and the Good Shepherd Center. Friday’s performance at the Good Shepherd Center was titled: Chen Yi’s Choice and featured mostly young, Asian composers. Toru Takemitsu was the only dead composer among the bunch. The Japanese composer was the most familiar name on the program, but Naxos lable fans would have recognized Huang Ruo and those who recalled the Seattle Symphony’s Pacific Rim festival a few years ago may have recalled Chen Yi.

The concert began with Huang’s Concerto No.3 for flute, clarinet, piano, violin and cello. The work begins vigorously with the cello, violin and piano followed by the clarinet and flute which emerge from behind the audience. There is a back and forth between the instrument groups before they drift away allowing the piano to sustain the piece.

As the work nears the conclusion, the players begin reciting a Chinese poem Sheng Sheng Man “Sounds Ever Slow”. During the recitation of the poem, Walter Gray (cello) and Paul Taub (flute) maintained the aural foundation of the piece. The piano erupts for a moment and then the work disappears as quickly as it began.

Huang had this to say about his chamber concertos:

The Italian word concerto means bringing together; traditionally, it has been used to describe works in which individual lines, instrumental or vocal, are assembled into a harmonious whole. My concerto cycle focuses not only on individual instruments but also combinations of instruments in dialogue, as well as the entire ensemble as a dramatic force. The cycle is linked both musically and theatrically. During each piece, musicians and conductor act with body motions, sing, chant, and speak. The first two concertos are both written for eight players with the same instrumentation; the third and fourth (for five and fifteen players respectively) complete a progression from divergence to confluence. My concertos represent the different stages and styles of my writing, and are a journal of my travels in the Eastern and Western worlds, looking also towards the future.

Chen Yi’s Ancient Chinese Dances was interesting for its depiction of a slow incantation involving an ox tail totem and later for Chen’s use of the clarinet to mimic a bamboo flute. Of course, Huang and Chen’s works weren’t the only worthwhile pieces on the program.

Kotoka Suzuki’s Hidden Voices, was written for a friend who also was a pen and ink artist. According to the composer, hidden in the music are fragments of tunes meaningful to the friend. But, the work’s abstract and pointillistic textures may also speak to the friend’s art as well. The final piece, Hu Xiao-ou’s Kekexili is a dramatic rebuke of illegal poaching, particularly of the Tibetan Antelope.

Chen Yi was in attendance but so were a number of the composers featured on the program. Having the composers present, sharing their thoughts about their own music, was illuminating and necessary. The Chamber Players also added their own thoughts. This commentary filled out understanding of music that is still very much exotic to most listeners. Who would have known the first movement of Xi Wang’s Three Images was based on childhood memories of hearing a woman scream, unless the composer told the audience?

Contemporary music needs to be seen and heard to be appreciated. Would the “conversation” between instruments in Huang Ruo’s concerto have been as explicit in a recording as it was watching and hearing the Seattle Chamber Players perform the piece? Probably not. Paul Taub and Laura DeLuca’s strolling down the center aisle were essential to framing the piece. Earlier in the year, when Eighth Blackbird performed Crumb’s Vox Balanae, the same was true. No matter how accurately the cello and flute evoke whale like sounds, the masked players and stage bathed in blue light add necessary context.

A Knack for the Seldom Heard

The Seattle Philharmonic ended their season on Sunday with the Bushnell Concerto Competition winner, Patrick Austin, joining the orchestra for a performance of Sam Barber’s Violin Concerto. Patrick Austin’s achievement and performance might have been the reason for the concert, but Roque Cordero’s Second Symphony was a pleasant discovery.

Adam Stern and the Seattle Philharmonic have a real knack for pieces like the Cordero symphony. This year, the orchestra has performed seldom heard works by Herrmann, Weill, and last month Gerard Schurmann’s Six Studies of Francis Bacon. Among other works last year, it was Leopold Stokowski’s orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition. Because of the difficulty new and unfamiliar works pose to audiences and players, community orchestra’s tend to stay away from them. The Seattle Philharmonic deserves more credit around town for their creative programming.

Born in Panama, Cordero earned a scholarship to travel to the University of Minnesota to study composition with Ernst Krenek and conducting with Dimitri Mitropolous. Cordero’s one movement symphony was premiered in 1957 at the Latin American Music Festival in Caracas. A year later, the piece was played in the United States as part of the first Inter-American Music Festival. Sunday’s performance was not only the Seattle premiere of the piece, but also the first time the work has been performed outside of the confines of a music festival celebrating music of the Americas.

The work’s rhythmic complexity propels the piece forward but also challenges the orchestra. It begins with a brass fanfare followed and some nice wind playing before settling into alternating vigorous and solemn passages. Cordero’s Panamanian influence is apparent in the composer’s use of percussion and the knowable repetition of rhythmic patterns across instrument groups.

After a short intermission, the orchestra returned to perform Barber’s Violin Concerto. Patrick Austin is a student at Mannes College of Music in New York, but possesses deep experience with Seattle orchestras including soloing with the Rain City Symphony and playing with Philharmonia Northwest. Austin is a performer with considerable skill and promise. The first two movements are generally placid, with the real virtuosic challenge coming in the furious third movement. Austin was in outstanding form as he managed the movement’s tricky passages.

Overall, the Philharmonic played well. The group tended to finish pieces stronger than they started. Stern’s orchestra has an affinity for drawing out good orchestral color and delivering solid performances of pieces heavily dependent on rhythm. Stern’s enthusiastic leadership probably helps as the orchestra charts a course that includes unfamiliar works like the Cordero.

With no second chances for the pieces or the performance, a Philharmonic concert is an event to be savored.