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Monthly Archives: March 2009

The beauty of the Brahms Double

The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) just finished a program of Brahms’ Concerto for Violin and Cello, Op. 102, and Bruckner’s (Marathon) Symphony No. 7, featuring guest conductor Hans Graf. I was fortunate enough to catch their first performance of this on Thursday night, but I was sitting far stage left. Though still in the orchestra section, I was about 26 rows back and right next to a rather noisy wall vent, which I’m really surprised about given the otherwise excellent acoustics in Symphony Hall. Nevertheless, violinist Janine Jansen and cellist Alisa Weilerstein gave a phenomenal performance of the Brahms. In hopes of getting closer and hearing the Brahms live for a second time, I went down to the Symphony Hall box office about 2 hours before the concert and hoped to get not a more central orchestra seat but a seat as close as possible to the soloists. Somehow the stars aligned and placed me in B18, which is the second row and slightly stage right, exactly where the soloists would be featured on stage. For the intimacy with these two performers, it was — absolutely — perfect.

I love the Brahms. It’s quickly becoming a favorite of mine, through it’s beautiful Andante to its humorous passages strewn throughout. The exchanges between the cello and violin were like quarreling lovers as their phrases overlapped and answered one another in rapid succession.

With that vantage point, my eyes admittedly were fixed upon Jansen and Weilerstein throughout the performance. It was clear that both personalities were present in this rendition of the music.

The proximity to Jansen was for me a masterclass performance, as I noted particularly her bowing technique on spiccato passages, double stops, and chords. She entered passages commandingly and left them gracefully. From Thursday’s performance, I recall feeling that the sound of the solo violin in Symphony Hall was slightly smaller than I had expected. It was unclear to me whether or not the problem was my expectation of orchestra-size sound from a single instrument. Nevertheless, being so close to Jansen on Tuesday allowed me to experience — in full — the power of the instrument.

Weilerstein is intensely passionate; she knew the music well, despite having the manuscript perched atop the simple folding stand in front of her. She made eye contact with Jansen in order to connect passages – she was not playing by prescribed rhythms in an arrangement as much as she was by an intimate knowledge of how transitions should sound. Eye contact with Graf was not as much for guidance as it was a two way communication that took place in the total absence of spoken language, yet it was clearly conversational. It freed the performance from the written music. It was an interpretation, which I’ve never quite understood in the context of European Classical music until that moment. Weilerstein also understood and probably enjoyed the humorous sections, as her eyebrows signaled acknowledgement of the curiosities. She listened intently to the orchestra as they played, and she seemed to really like the music.

From that close, the orchestra sounded phenomenal in quite a bizarre way. Spatial separation was distinct, almost unnatural, and the sound was completely enveloping. About 15 rows back, one gets a sense of the orchestra as a singular emanation with a wall of sound penetrating the space between the stage and your ears. The difference is almost akin to headphones versus speakers. In row B, I had on the most perfect headphones possible.

The recent performances of Brahms, from a recent performance of Symphony No. 4 to these performances of the Double Concerto have quickly combined in support of Brahms among my favorite music. These performances of the Double have been phenomenal, perhaps the best I’ve witnessed ever and among the best I’ve heard from the BSO, whose Tuesday performance was particularly grand. Jansen and Weilerstein were wonderful — I look forward to hearing them both again.

The wild ride of Brahms

The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) are currently queued up for the final performance of this week’s program, featuring virtuosi violinist Janine Jansen and cellist Alisa Weilerstein performing Brahms’ Concerto for Violin and Cello, Op. 102 (aptly named). I’m not sure if Jansen and Weilerstein have ever taken the stage together before, but they had appeared to have a wonderful chemistry during the performance and rapport after it was finished, and they both played brilliantly. I am going to try and catch Tuesday’s performance as well. What more is there to say?

On the other hand, where I have found yet another Brahms piece that I have fallen for, Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 demonstrated to me that, apparently, Bruckner was a pretty verbose guy. Man, that piece was long. Definitely a case of too many notes for me, that night.

Small ensemble, symphony sound

I was fortunate enough to catch the Boston Symphony Chamber Players in a performance this afternoon at the New England Conservatory’s exquisite Jordan Hall. Andre Previn was a guest performer/composer, as they performed Previn’s Trio for piano, flute, and bassoon. Previn also featured on the Poulenc Sextet for piano, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn. Other pieces in the program included the Debussy Sonata for flute, viola, and harp and Brahms’ String Quintet No. 2 in G Op. 111.

The Previn trio was surprising — it was my first encounter of the BSO doing anything modern — Previn wrote it in 1994, which is safe to call modern. The movement tempi are aptly updated in modern English: they are named Lively, Slow, and Jaunty, and the musicians were quite true to the composer’s direction. Featuring a piano, oboe, and bassoon, it was the first time I had heard this variation of a piano trio. It’s stunned me to hear, for the first time, the similarities of tone present in the bassoon and a cello. While there are obvious differences in string vibration and resonance, it was still an appropriate sound. An oboe as a substitute for the violin was far less appropriate but not unheard of. (The flute is another poor sub for the violin.) The performance itself was different, and interesting. It was clear that Previn has a sense of humor – definitely a treat to catch him in performance.

While mildly surprised by my enjoyment of the trio, I cannot say that I was very happy with either the Debussy trio or the Poulenc. I had a hard time dealing with the sounds, as I found the combination of sounds unpleasant. I found the combination of sounds on the Poulenc especially tiresome on my ears – perhaps I am not quite tuned for a combination of wind instruments playing constantly together. In the process of the Debussy, however, it was clear to me that violist Steven Ansell is incredibly talented. It’s sometimes difficult to hear violas in the full symphony, so it was nice to get a hint of Ansell’s virtuosic capabilities.

This was further evidenced by the Brahms String Quintet, in which the principals of the Boston Symphony Orchestra were all on stage for this stellar performance. Concertmaster Malcome Lowe, along with Assistant Principal Violinist Halden Martinson, Cellist Jules Eskin, and Cathy Basrak rounded out the quintet. Each member of the group shone, though I admit that I was focused on Lowe, Eskin, and Ansell primarily. Ansell had a moving solo during the Adagio, I believe, that reminded me what it was about the richness of the viola that has always intrigued me as a violinist. Rhythmically the quintet tackled several tricky passages with grace. These five voices were singing in harmonic unison – in its marvelous simplicity, the form of a small ensemble was almost entirely capable of capturing the grandeur of the larger symphony. Their performance, with near perfect execution, reminded me of yet another Brahms that I found that I enjoy tremendously.

While I had to wait patiently through the Debussy and Poulenc, I was treated with a gem of the Brahms that I’m very much hoping was recorded this afternoon, as I am already missing it as if I’ve known it forever.

Cylinder Archive Online

I just learned about an archive of some of the first recorded music being digitized by the University of California Santa Barbara. It is available here. They have mp3 and WAV copies of the music, though no FLAC, for whatever reason. It includes classic jazz, orchestral stuff, and other stuff like spoken word. Appears to be a pretty exciting resource of early recorded music.

A bunch of polkas and waltzes

I didn’t know a lot about Brahms before 2 weeks ago, when the Boston Symphony Orchestra was set to perform his fourth and final symphony in their weekly program, along with Nielsen’s Helios Overture and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 18, featuring Richard Goode on piano. The program’s guest conductor was Herbert Blomstedt.

As usual, the program notes (freely available on the BSO website) did a great job in shedding light on the process of composing by biographical sketches that often endear the reader to the composer. The bio on Brahms particularly was appealing, as it discusses Brahms bringing his friends together to essentially pitch the idea of Symphony No. 4 to them. He garnered feedback, and in one story, he dismissed his final symphony as “a bunch of polkas and waltzes.” Reading this pre-concert, I didn’t really know what to expect from this self-deprecating characterization, and having very little familiarity with his works in general, I was far more excited by the Mozart. The Helios was also a bit foreign to me, and the pre-concert talk did not help break a feeling that it would be somewhat trite in its presentation. It was a concert program that would soon challenge all of my preconceptions, which was evident immediately and highly amusing.

The Helios traverses the activity of a day, starting off with the calm quiet of morning and following the perceived movement of the sun (helios). Until now, no piece had quite capture the fantastic dynamic range possible in Symphony Hall better than the BSO’s performance of this piece. I had a pretty phenomenal first orchestra seat, but the pianissimo of the strings alone crawled along the baseline of my audible range, and the development into the grandeur of the full orchestra was quite a powerful sound to behold. The piece moved along rather quickly, and I found Nielsen to express his musical ideas succinctly, something I have come to appreciate after having heard a recent performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7. I know less about Nielsen than I do Brahms, but he will surely be one for whom I keep an eye out.

Next Goode performed the piano concerto by Mozart, and perhaps like a lot of people, I have a reasonable idea of how I feel like Mozart should sound. Perhaps I am wrong, but there is an interpretive element, and when I play Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3, for instance, I am definitely going for a distinct style, marked by speed and very light movements. It’s not just a rhythmic sensibility but something of the attack, which are ideas that translate across instruments. I found some inherent quality of youthful playing, perhaps, missing from Goode’s performance. I did not enjoy it at all, and it was at the time very difficult to separate the music from the performance, which I did not feel did justice to the piece. I’ll have to listen to another rendition of it to get a sense of the actual music.

And finally, the Brahms. The Brahms. What was it? It was bold; it was brilliant. I’ve since heard a recording of the excellent New York Philharmonic with Lorin Maazel, and the difference between the recorded work and the live performance (assuming all else is quite comparable) reinforces the power of live performances. The story told by Jan Swafford in the program notes suggests that the intensity of the piece was perhaps foreboding of darker times to come in Europe, and this story, regardless of accuracy, set a mood only possible in the confines of the active imagination. It amplified the emotional content of the piece beautifully, and I could not help but notice that the BSO’s execution under Blomstedt was excellent. Of the performances I have heard at BSO this season, it was perhaps the best so far.

My preconceived notions of the program were completely backward. The Mozart for which I was most excited was disappointing in its execution, where the most dismissed piece (the Nielsen) was surprising. I came in with halfhearted expectations of the Brahms — after all, if it was so great, wouldn’t I have known it by now? — and left with a similar question: since it is so great, why haven’t I known it by now? I am happy to have discovered it now, better than never. While I certainly look forward to more Nielsen in the future, the enlightenment to Brahms was the true gem of this performance, one I will not soon forget.

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