Saturday, October 29, 2011

Concert Review: Budapest Festival Orchestra with András Schiff at Carnegie

The problematic part of writing a review, is that the problematic parts might take much longer to explain than the non-problematic parts. (As a result, I will structure the remainder of the review in pyramid style (or inverted-pyramid, if one prefers that terminology), as opposed to this outset and rather than chronologically, with the peak up top, to emphasize the overriding highly enjoyable evening.)

In tonight's concert at Carnegie Hall, by the Budapest Festival Orchestra with conductor  Iván Fischer and piano soloist András Schiff, the highlight for me, or the part which I found myself responding to with an unconditional "yes", was the first piece after intermission, Béla Bartók's luminescent third piano concerto. As Jack Sullivan explains in Carnegie's extensive and excellently organized programme notes, this piece was one of the great masterpieces Bartók wrote in the final years of his life, along with the Concerto for Orchestra, the Sonata for Solo Violin, and the unfinished viola concerto. Its characteristically Bartókian Hungarianness is suffused at times with moments of near Bach-chorale-like treatments of tonality, a sort of revisiting of the youthful Bartók who sprang from a tradition of tonality, at the same time leaving the question, What now? (The piano gives comments to this question, in Hungarian.) It is a beautiful, melodious, and exciting concerto, and Schiff played it gorgeously - it is clearly dear to his heart, and it was evident that he knows it inside out, evident from more than just his playing it by memory - I felt I could immediately understand it, as though I could speak Hungarian, even though this was my first time hearing the concerto live.
I would have liked to hear this piece directly before intermission, when the atmosphere to give a well-deserved standing ovation could be present, and the bravos could spill into the buzz at intermission. Nonetheless, the programming of the evening was interesting precisely for its non-standard format: overture - piano concerto, intermission, piano concerto -symphony. The double-concerto made the evening a workout for Schiff! (And, if one considers that, by playing the Bartók's first piano concerto, and then his third piano concerto, he'd by default also played a second concerto, it might be tempting to count three ... )
Bartók's first piano concerto was written twenty years before the third, and is entirely more percussive and primal - the programme notes mention "barbarism" and "cataclysm". Bartók wrote it for his own tours, at a time when he was still strong enough to play it. Despite the coolness of its classical concerto form, the percussive material's explosive verve leaves a sudden and immediate impression, less broad than that of the overarching third concerto. It is also played less than the third, and Schiff used the music for it (detracting nothing from his effective and impressive performance), employing a page-turner whose skin-baring formal black attire matched that of the orchestra's other women, perhaps a signature of the group's look.
The evening's first piece was Schubert's overture to "Die Zauberharfe". The orchestra's seating was an interesting touch: a row of basses brought up the rear behind the winds, who dispersed across the back of the stage. A solo quartet of strings and winds stood before Fischer, and the second violins were opposite the firsts, allowing for play with antiphony. The overture was a good length for taking in novelty, and appreciating the resultant clarity in sound, of the thought and energy that went into these decisions, along with the adjustments the orchestra members had to make to be comfortable playing far from one another, only rarely at the cost of togetherness.
The final piece, however, Schubert's songful and "most Mozartean" fifth symphony (written in 1816 when he was just nineteen), is, while almost unbearably touching, also fraught with the elements that make Schubert potentially deadly to performers. It is full of nuance, and it extends. It plays with major and minor in the subtlest but most pregnant of ways - is one to laugh, or to cry? - in some passages almost every note is fate's weighty hinge to either a joyful flight or a vale of tears. To slough over this is to miss the point, no matter how many hinges there are -  it's as though glossing over a teenager's emotionality with "never mind, his hormones will sort themselves out eventually". The second movement began to acquire this feeling, having too much idle forward direction; by contrast, the third lacked the feeling of its given tempo, Allegro Molto. I found my mind wandering away from the music and to the philosophical question, "Is 'Allegro Molto' a structural element in the symphony, and thus explicable in structural terms, or is it a state-of-being of the performers, and as such possibly intangible"? The players were clearly putting a great deal of energy into the movement, as was evident in the sound, which was vibrant though too rough for my taste, but still the music struck me as slow and dull. As if to confirm my impression, my seat-neighbour, clearly a newcomer to classical concerts (engaging in flash-photography during the performance before being advised that it's not allowed), left at the end of the movement. It strikes me that, for Allegro Molto to sound as such in character, in this movement it may need to be executed as "Presto", in the sense that it needs to be felt in 1, rather than 3, or even better, in 4-bar phrases. This is not a stretch given that Beethoven had by 1816 composed many scherzos, in place of the obligatory menuet movement, that are usually played (and indicated) at such tempos. Why is this movement not titled "scherzo"? Perhaps it is not meant to be a joke, its import serious as a menuet, though the tempo no longer danceable. The fourth movement is an "Allegro Vivace", and here Fischer picked up the pace again, though indulging in excessive and odd rubatos when transitioning between sections. I wondered if it had anything to do with the seating of the orchestra and the difficulties in communicating imposed on the players by the seating- the basses and cellos scattered at strategic places throughout the rest of the strings, for a more homogenized blend. Indeed, their togetherness as sections, in this expanded chamber-music setting, was impressive.
Fischer delighted the audience when, giving in to the three curtain-calls, he asked (in Hungarian) whether the orchestra should play Bartók or Schubert as an encore. The audience calling out alternately, he put it to a vote, which gave quite a bit more noise to Bartók than the Schubert, but enough to Schubert that they played both anyway. The Schubert was first and very short - a German dance - which one?? - and most clearly performed in Hungarian: the first beats were greatly emphasized with both dynamics and rhythm, no longer as a rubato, in which time is taken as a liberty, but as a decided change in style, which aberration the second violins, in continuous eighth-notes, amazingly adjusted to seamlessly. Schubert did live in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the connection may make intellectual sense, though it was certainly a stretch musically.
The last two Romanian Folk Dances of Bartók rounded out the evening, with the extra players for it tumbling onto the stage as it had already begun - and a magnificent, spirited ending it became.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Concert Review: Frank Peter Zimmermann and Enrico Pace play Bach Sonatas in Avery Fisher Hall

FPZ  2011.10.12

     Tonight, violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann and pianist Enrico Pace performed six Bach sonatas for violin and harpsichord, BWV 1014-1019, in Avery Fisher Hall. These sonatas were written during Bach's prolifically-instrumental Cöthen period, which also produced the six sonatas for solo violin, and the Well-Tempered Clavier. They feature an expansion of chromaticism that came out beautifully in the slow movements tonight: the duo let the harmonies melt into the ethereal (just as they should), leaving the audience hanging on this golden thread, fully spellbound, and utterly silent. There were many beautiful moments of supple phrasing - the repertoire is staple for the performers, and they have found the freedom inherent in the music.
     The acoustical issues of playing this programme in the monstrous Avery Fisher Hall, were probably best illustrated by the amusing moment at the end, when, following a standing ovation, Zimmermann announced his encore in a very baroque dynamic, and all that could be heard where I sat, towards the rear of the orchestra, was something about "sixth". He had already raised his violin to start playing, when a woman from the back called out, in characteristically speak-one's-mind New-York style, "Sorry?"
     A wave of chuckles rippled forward through the audience; when it reached him, he replied, tongue-in-cheek, having clearly not heard what she'd said, "By Bach" (It was to the merriment of those who could hear it.)
     Being guilty of the following myself, I can perhaps especially appreciate the oddity of performing Bach in the 21st-century still in the mid-20th-century tradition. History, and the great recent developments in Historical Performance Practice, tell us that these pieces were not composed for giant concert halls (even if seating tonight was only on the orchestra and 1st-tier levels), that the baroque violin was much quieter than the modern one, and that the flamboyant grand piano (strikingly setting the stage tonight), would have been a plucky harpsichord instead. If we listen to the radio, we are highly likely to have had opportunity to hear it in this version, and it takes a moment for the ear to re-adjust to what those of us old enough to know cassette tapes remember from then. Occasionally, I was bothered by Zimmermann's use of vibrato, which, though normal in the 20th-century tradition, bent the pitch sufficiently for me to wonder if Bach's keen ear for pitch wouldn't have considered it so much as to be entering alternate tunings than well-tempered, a sort of trill in ill-tempered tuning. Likewise, I wished for a gentler E-string, one that when played open, would be more reminiscent of a wispy bird than a bright-faced cell phone (on which vibrato was a welcome softening). Nonetheless, since the concert had to be in Avery Fisher Hall, due to it being part of Zimmermann's residency this year with Avery Fisher's resident New York Philharmonic (though many wished that, if 'twere to be a large hall in New York, it might have been Carnegie) - the setting highlighted why the instruments have developed the way they have: to project. I also don't think that Bach would have minded a change in instrument to suit the venue, especially considering the programme notes' explication that the sonatas' titles' in the first source leave some wiggle room in instrumentation: "Six sonatas for obbligato harpsichord and solo violin, with the bass accompanied by a viola da gamba if you like". The acoustics were further enhanced by a very visually-appealing wooden screen behind the performers, though unfortunately Pace benefitted from its amplifying resonance more than Zimmermann, who of course stood further from it.
     As those gorgeously mesmerizing moments of phrasing showed, there is certainly value in this way as well. And being heard is a good thing too, though maybe not as funny as not being heard. $35 can be a prohibitive ticket price to musicians and students, and, considering that I didn't hear the first half, but rather was very fortunate to find a kind person with a complimentary ticket and "stub in" at intermission and hear the second half, I'm quite sure indeed that I preferred hearing it!

Claudia Schaer, Musician

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