Berkeley
Symphony Orchestra
Zellerbach
Hall, Berkeley
January
13, 2007
Berkeley
Symphony’s first concert of the year, conducted by George Thomson
on January 13, was a typically eclectic and interesting affair,
featuring two big works -- one an important Bay Area premiere, the
other a standard -- and a pair of short, thoughtfully-programmed,
charmers.
The
concert went by the name "Hold On," after Olly cq Wilson’s
Symphony No. 3, subtitled "Hold On." The composer, now
professor of music emeritus at U.C. Berkeley, in turn named the
symphony for the African American spiritual whose melody is at the
heart of the work. "Hold On" got a wholly successful
performance, the kind that leaves the listener wanting to hear the
work again, unlike the Sibelius Violin Concerto, the other
major work of the night.
"Hold
On" can’t be stylistically pigeonholed. It’s sometimes
jarringly dissonant and sometimes beautifully consonant. The
dissonances aren’t the dissonance of doctrine – they’re there
to disturb the listener, rather than to conform to a compositional
system. Wilson’s comments on the Symphony state that the work both
reflects on and celebrates the African American spiritual tradition
and mention the opening movement focuses on human persistence,
tenacity, and fortitude. (Those are also the central themes of the
spiritual "Hold On.") That first movement, fanastically
energetic, often dense and jagged, with complex cross-rhythms across
the orchestra, also contains a strikingly beautiful contrasting
section in which Wilson sets a plangent oboe solo in a web of
shimmering string sound. He’s a master orchestrator, and that
section is only one of many beauties in "Hold On." Another
comes at the opening of the second movement, a wash of winds
punctuated by muted brass solos, and at the movement’s close, where
slightly out-of-phase strings repeated a phrase while circling a
particular tone. That movement is explicitly based on "Hold On."
The last movement opens where the second movement ends, though at a
much faster tempo. Prominent brass fanfares and a long celebratory
section follow. The spiritual’s melody reappears toward the end of
the movement, and the symphony slowly and quietly dies away into
nothingness. "Hold On" is a terrific work on a very large
and ambitious scale, and Thomson did a great job
with it; we can hope that other Bay Area orchestras pick it up.
The
Sibelius is a showpiece for the violinist, and needs a virtuosic,
assured reading to make its full effect. Not that the score doesn’t
have many beauties apart from the flashy solo part and its many
effects, from the cool and granitic opening to the thumping, almost
primitive rhythms of the last movement – but the violinist must be
fierce and gentle by turns, and must always play with great panache
and courage. In Margot Schwartz, who grew up in Oakland and attended
the Crowden School, the Symphony had a soloist whose strengths were
best displayed in the gentler parts of the score. She was at her best
in the slow movement, where the warm beauty of her low register and
her strong sense of line sustained the mood of the music well. The
fast outer movements were less satisfactory, largely because Schwartz
seemed to be playing carefully rather than letting loose and taking
some risks. This manifested itself in a certain level of rhythmic
rigidity in runs and arpeggios and, perhaps, in an unwillingness to
let go emotionally and take some musical risks. Perhaps the caution
was justifiable; Schwartz suffered occasional lapses of intonation
and smudged notes here and there. The last movement was taken under
the ideal tempo, and yet something went a bit wrong in the last
movement’s ghostly passage in harmonics. Schwartz is a very young
player at the beginning of her career; while she received wonderfully
sympathetic and attentive support from Thomson and the orchestra,
perhaps nerves got the better of her. Certainly this won’t be the
last we’ll hear of her, and very likely with more experience will
come more assured performances.
The
concert opened with Stravinsky’s Concertino for Twelve
Instruments, a work that originated as a string quartet and
was rescored by the composer for the odd little ensemble of flute,
oboe, English horn, clarinet, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets, tenor trombone,
bass trombone, violin, and cello, the two strings both described as
obligato. It’s a good, not great, work, with some great moments,
notably the long double-stopped violin solo, wry and plaintive by
turns, and the jazzy middle section.
In
an inspired bit of programming, the second half of the program led
off with an overture-in-all-but-name, Matthew Locke’s 1674
Curtain Tune, written for an adaptation of The
Tempest. A subset of the orchestral strings played the
Curtain Tune in fine Baroque style, without
vibrato and with gorgeous phrasing. It made a great prelude to "Hold
On," which also has string-only sections, especially the
closing, of great sustained beauty. And the Locke segued so smoothly
into the Wilson – because Thomson never relaxed between the two -
that a number of audience members were fooled into thinking they were
movements of the same work (the clue was the theorbo player’s quiet
exit at the close of the Locke).
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