Brilliant sound from Znaider

This week’s performances at the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) feature Sir Colin Davis conducting, with Nikolaj Znaider playing solo violin. The BSO performed Mozart’s Symphony No. 38 “Prague,” which is a nice piece that I’ve heard before and have recordings of but do not know well. Znaider performed the Elgar Violin Concerto.

I was seated stage left on the first balcony, with a crick in my neck thanks in part to the Loud Breather sitting next to me but great acoustics otherwise. The seat provided me with a view from the top that I seldom had experienced in Symphony Hall before, with a clear angle at the two violin sections situated next to one another on the stage. The full strength of the symphony returned tonight, with Malcolm Lowe and Tamara Smirnova back at first stand (order restored in my universe).

From this viewpoint, Znaider appeared larger than life on the stage, a towering figure whose actual stature I had difficulty ascertaining. But the sound he produced from that ex-Kreisler 1732 Guarneri del Gesù instrument was as large as he appeared. Rich and magnificent, the power emanating from that tiny violin body filled the hall with grandeur at each note. According to the BSO’s notes, the del Gesù’s namesake Fritz Kreisler himself thought of the Elgar that it ranked among the greatest concertos written for the instrument, and he gave its premiere performance. To think how nearly the exact vibrating tones of the piece had echoed from within the violin so many years before and were now finding another, unique escape on a new stage ….

The Elgar Violin Concerto is a long, complex piece. I’m going to have to give it more time before making any judgments on it, though I must admit that the melodies in the Brahms or the Bruch are more palatable for me on first taste. I suspect there are gems to be discovered in the Elgar if one has the presence to listen for them, and hearing Znaider for my first recital cannot be a bad beginning. It is clear that there are a great many number of talented violinists out there, and it’s still an exciting time to see what fresh creativity they can bring to the hallowed old traditions of this timeless music.

Schubert rude by comparison

I cannot recall a time when I did not know the name Yo-Yo Ma. For someone who played classical violin, I suppose it is difficult to avoid coming across the famous cellist’s name, but it never dawned on me that there are a large number of people, of all degrees of education, who have not heard of Yo-Yo Ma. So I definitely took it personally when I had immense trouble finding someone to go to Ma’s performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) this week. An unfortunately string of events transpired such that I was nearly stuck with an extra orchestra seat, but luckily my friend AL was free and, after searching for “Yo-Yo Ma” on the Internet, decided to join me.

Certainly there was some anticipation associated with my first time hearing Ma live. My brother has seen him twice, and we sent my parents to see him just this past year. Out of my immediate family, I was the only one who had not seen him perform live, and as soon as I saw his name on the schedule for this BSO season, I got seats in the orchestra section, about 30 rows back and stage left.

In the past few months, I had ended up in a cello concerto phase, listening to Pablo Casals, Jacqueline du Pré, and others perform the Saint-Saëns, Lalo, Dvorak, Elgar, and many other cello concertos. This led me to a familiarity with the first two of Haydn’s three or four cello concertos, which was good timing considering that Ma was set to play Haydn’s first cello concerto, the only one that appears to be undisputedly attributed to him. I can find evidence of three of the four cello concertos, and it is third that seems to be lacking information, for reasons that remain unclear to me. Among the three, the so-called Second Concerto, in D Major (Hob VIIb/2) is my favorite. Nevertheless, I was pleased to find out that I was familiar with the First Concerto in C Major (Hob VIIb/1).

Ma spiritedly appeared on stage with what I believe was his Davidov Stradivarius cello, and he genuinely looked pleased to perform. There was no music or stand for him, and he took his place among the reduced strength orchestra, with conductor Ton Koopman. The solo part for the Haydn does not start for a few bars, and yet Ma looked like he was completely involved in his playing, which caused me a moment of pause before realizing what was happening: Ma was air bowing or lightly playing the entire cello part! He enjoyed playing so much that he wanted to be constantly playing. Later I would be slightly disappointed that he did not join the cello section in the orchestra for the remaining pieces. When his solo started, however, the sound that he managed to coax from his cello was something spectacular to behold. The sound was truly effortless, the Davidov clearly responsive. It was the smoothest sound I had ever heard from a cello before, and it was so beautiful that I now wonder if that was what a cello should sound like. Granted, the Haydn is an admittedly polite piece, so it’s not like Ma would be reaching down into the belly of the instrument to conjure up the throes of passion. But nevertheless, there was never any grit or biting in the response, even on staccato passages — they were as noted. It is easy to attribute this to a combination of the bow and the instrument via the player, and I’m very curious about what bow he chose for the evening’s performance. In any case, while I’ve enjoyed Ma’s recorded catalogue very much and have known people who have met him personally, his excitement for the music, even when he wasn’t really playing, was contagious. The performance made me a fan.

I lament again that this piece was not the most dramatic or thematically interesting to me as, say, the Lalo or the Elgar. It would have been nice to hear Ma take on the Roccoco variations of Tchaikovsky, the closest he ever came to writing a proper cello concerto, apparently. While I’ve heard a couple of recordings of his interpretation of the Brahms’ Double Concerto, it would certainly be a dream to hear him perform that live. Especially the fireworks of the third movement would be interesting to hear on his cello, in contrast to the sensibilities of the Haydn.

In fact, it was not just the Haydn Cello Concerto that was straightforward and nice. The small orchestral ensemble performed Haydn’s Symphony No. 98 and CPE Bach’s Symphony in G Major, all of which elicited a similar reaction from me. These were pleasant pieces that were surprisingly uninteresting to me, a trend that could be summarized by my greater interest in Romantic era music. It’s not at all to say that there isn’t a solemn or ethereal quality that can be present in Baroque or Classical pieces, but the Romantic era was all about drama and overwhelming intensity, which are more welcome in art than in personal relationships!

The Schubert Unfinished Symphony is reflective of this. It was my first encounter with the Schubert, and I was not expecting it, making it the evening’s gem. In my head, I can only imagine how the final two movements might have unfolded, and it’s a terrible shame that the piece ends with no apparent sense of resolution.

I did not stand in line for rush tickets for the final performance on Tuesday, though I’m already partially regretting the decision, since I don’t know when I’ll next be able to hear Yo-Yo Ma and the Davidov. The sound of it resonates with me, and it’s made me eager to pay closer attention to the sound of other cellos. Of course it takes both a magician and a willing rabbit to make the trick work, but together, they were quite entrancing.

Of Christmases past

I did not own a large number of cassette tapes as a kid listening to music, and it’s actually because I thought that the format was already dead. It was prone to a number of obvious errors, such as damaging the tape with the tape head and of course pulling out the tape when it caught funny. I was fortunate to be buying my first music in an era when CDs were beginning to fully impose their dominance on the long-dead format, so I opted for CDs in most cases. However, it didn’t stop one or two tapes from making its way into my music collection (I now have exactly thirty). One of my favorites was Boyz II Men’s Christmas Interpretations, which was a Christmas gift, if I recall correctly, from a friend of mine (ECC) who also got me a Vanessa Williams holiday CD that I no longer have. I’ve since completely lost the ability to play cassettes in any reasonable way, but I bought a couple of the songs on iTunes — my favorites by this group are “Let it Snow” and the a cappella “Silent Night.” I also grew up with Mariah Carey’s album, Merry Christmas, and like so many others, I freely admit that I like the song, “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” In its 15 years, that song has now become part of many holiday traditions in pop culture, and I’m now convinced that Mariah Carey will be remembered as much for this song as she will for her R&B pop hits in the 90s.

While these remain staples of my Christmas musical tradition, since then I’ve added a few Christmas jazz albums like Oscar Peterson, Vince Guaraldi, and Diana Krall. Most recently, since going to the Boston Pops Holiday Concerts, I’ve been looking for an album of orchestral Christmas music, which reminds me that the Boston Pops have released their very popular arrangement of Twelve Days of Christmas on mp3. Of course I’ve yet to find a full orchestral recording that reminds me of the Pops performances that I enjoyed so much, but it’s a high bar to set.

Anyway, It’s kind of a fun time of year that comes and goes so quickly, but listening to holiday music always just seems to make sense.

An Evening at the Symphony

There is a dearth of modern written histories of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), so I’ve had to go to some lengths to find anything on the subject. While it’s true that a treasure of source material is held in the BSO Archives and likely in the Boston Public Library, hunting it down would take quite a bit of time and effort. There is at least one older history from 1914 written on the BSO, and there are a few books on Symphony Hall that are currently available for sale at the gift shop in Symphony Hall. Finally, I found two other books on the BSO with limited online information: In Concert: On Stage and Offstage with the Boston Symphony Orchestra by Carl Vigeland and Evening at the Symphony by Janet Baker-Carr. I decided to buy both of the latter books used for a few dollars each, and I recently received Baker-Carr’s book in the mail. I paid $4 for this book, so its condition was expectedly well worn. However, upon opening the book, I saw a handwritten dedication that was signed:

Seiji 1977.

It took me a second to put it together, but I think this could be a personally signed copy of this book from Seiji Ozawa, who served as the music director of the BSO from 1973-2002. The dedication was quite personal in nature, not reproduced here to respect his privacy. Again, I am not sure it is authentic, but I do plan on writing to Maestro Ozawa and the BSO to see if it is and whether he or they would like the book for their collection.

A lot of accents

For me, it was destined to be a night of discovery, since I was not particularly familiar with any of the pieces on the schedule for this week’s program at the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO). The program featured Béla Bartók’s Divertimento for Strings, Bohuslav Martinů’s Violin Concerto No. 2, and Antonin Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 in G Major. I anticipated these pieces from least to greatest in this order as well, knowing nothing about any of them save Dvořák’s symphony. The BSO were led by guest conductor Christopher von Dohnányi, and Frank Peter Zimmerman was the violin soloist for the Martinů.

The relative simplicity of the Bartók Divertimento was plainly apparent in the lack of winds, brass, and percussion, giving a thin sound to the piece that here sounded relatively uninteresting. If I had closed my eyes for a moment, I might well have been listening to an advanced amateur string orchestra playing this piece just as well, since it did not appear to require the resources of our orchestra, who were at reduced strength anyhow. The second and third movements were slightly more pleasing to me, as they seemed to ease into a more comprehensible melodic structure, but I never got a grasp on the piece and was happy to quickly forget about it.

One quirk of Symphony Hall is that anyone can gauge the attendance by two metrics: one audible and one visual. The visual metric is by simply looking around for empty seats. After the intermission, I counted at least 20 seats directly in front of me, which for the BSO equates to chirping crickets. However, the arguably more amusing metric for attendance is the Sounds of the Bouncing Chairs. The seats in the hall are older, and they are joined and supported by a wooden frame that can make an unpleasant and loud noise when kicked or opened. Some of the chairs slam down, while others do this bouncing routine giving it a kind of fake reverberation. In fact it is good practice to open any collapsed chairs around you prior to the start of a piece, so they aren’t apt to be disturbed during the performance. Otherwise, you may as well yell, “Timber!” as the seats fall. Because the number of empty seats are limited, the number of falling chairs is probably related to the number of empty seats. In a typical performance here, which is often filled close to capacity, one usually hears no more than one falling chair during any given piece (usually the first) and no more than two throughout the evening. Tonight, during that Bartók, I counted four but may well have missed some in the later movements.

I was curious about the Martinů, since the concerto is one of my favorite musical forms (so long as it does not feature the flute, sorry). Additionally, having played the violin, there’s a certain place in my heart for violin pieces (of which there are so many). Yet my expectations were tempered by the knowledge that the Martinů was a twentieth century piece, which isn’t quite as alarming as post-1970s Miles Davis but has a greater probability of sounding like John Coltrane’s Ascension (confusing and dissonant but at least very long). I should say that Zimmerman gave a nice performance, navigating through tricky chords and double stops without making a mess of things. But there was nothing to me that was particularly compelling about the music itself, and this is another case in which I am fortunate to have the BSO expand my musical horizon but thankful that I can file Martinů away for the time being.

And finally, Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 followed the intermission, which I spent in preparation for the demands of listening to a symphony properly. It’s not that they are necessarily so dense that it requires a vast amount of preparation, but the symphonic form is so rich with its instrumentation and movement of themes that the appreciation of the piece can be heightened in the right mindset. I actually recognized Symphony No. 8 in part, which was not altogether surprising to me but certainly welcome. I’ve said it before, and I’ll reiterate that the symphonic form is where the BSO shine. With orchestra seats in KK, we heard the full extent of the symphony once again. There really is no electronically reproduced musical experience quite the same. I found the Dvořák to be pleasant; this is not to my ears a particularly great symphony, in terms of its inability to elicit a particularly interesting range of emotions. I do think that the composer was, perhaps, a gifted melodist, which endears me more toward his chamber music, which I have explored some but far from exhaustively.

I suppose that it is unreasonable to expect every night at the BSO to reveal a musical gem that to my eyes remains unpolished and undiscovered. And while I have heard other music by Bartók and Dvořák, I am not at all familiar enough with their work to claim that tonight was any more than an introduction to all three composers, one I am thankful to have experienced.