Two Mahler Symphonies at the Boston Symphony Orchestra

Mahler Symphonies at the Boston Symphony Orchestra 2018-19 Season

by Boaz Heilman

I finally know what it is about Andris Nelsons conducting that I don't like, but that I couldn’t quite pinpoint before.

The BSO has long been the orchestras’ orchestra, among the world’s finest. It has boasted some of the world’s greatest conductors, among them Pierre Monteux, Koussevitzky, Leinsdorf, Osawa and—yes—James Levine. Mr. Nelson, to put it politely, just isn’t in the same league.

He has a wonderful orchestra, and he himself is musical and proficient enough to let his musicians shine. The trumpet solo in the recent Mahler 5^thwas phenomenal—because Thomas Rolfs is superb. The harp in the famous Adagietto glowed. And so on, so many different moments of glorious playing.

Problem is, the Mahler 5th never became the drama that it is. 

The “Resurrection,” Symphony No. 2, played just earlier this season, never lifted anyone, let alone resurrected them.

The pianissimos are gorgeous, even a curmudgeon like me has to admit. Long, sustained passages played—by the entire orchestra—so softly you actually had to listen to them. Now that’s what I go to the BSO for. Their sound. Magnificent, nothing short of.

And Nelsons, I am sure, is paid handsomely to let them sound their best.

What he’s not paid for is making the music ebb and soar, take you on a journey not only of sound, but also of emotions and powerful thoughts. There was no menace in the rhythmic trumpet solo. No victory rattle of the arrogant. The Viennese waltz never quite made the level of gilded, vapid, bubble-headed luxury which is how Mahler was sure to have conceived it.

The beautiful Adagietto. What more can anyone say? Truly one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever composed. Ever.

Yet—maybe because the harp’s beauty was so in the fore, on display—that at this concert the piece never became multi- dimensional. There are moments in this movement where the harp has barely to outline the distant horizon painted by the strings; but it was always highlighted, projected to the front and breaking distance and perspective. 

In Mahler, there is so much more than just sound. And don’t get me wrong—there’s plenty of sound there. Think of the climax of the “Resurrection,” which occurs in the last movement, with the entire chorus exploding over a full orchestra, organ, bells and all. Now there’s a powerful moment, and the BSO with Nelsons performed it that way.  Yet it could have--and should have--carried much more emotional punch with it.

I have to admit, the BSO and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus being what it is, the opening of the “Urlicht” movement was sublime. It is supposed to be. Only that between this moment and the aforementioned climax, the music has to take the listener on a journey of faith, from despair to redemption. This particular performance, it didn’t. And, though I didn't go to the other performances, I'm guessing it didn't on those occasions either.

Nelson’s musicality is simply not in the same league as the other, great conductors who have led the BSO. He lets the orchestra sound its finest, but he does not serve the music. 

It’s his lack of drama. Let’s face it. He’s boring. 

What the BSO needs is a conductor who is a sound visionary, a musician who will not only make their instrument sing beautifully but will also drain you emotionally.

Great emphasis is put today on making old warhorses sound fresh. Often, it’s in the speed or tempo. Sometimes another trick or shtick. Why not just let the music say what it needs to? If it’s a work of art, it will always speak to us. It’s all in the music. But you have to get at it, to get beyond the sound itself, to the story behind it. It will always sound fresh if you got it. That's the greatness of music, even beyond the greatness of the interpreters who give it life. It has to sing through them, despite them, to overcome them. 

I guess I'll stick with Bernstein.

Speed and Volume: The New Standard in Classical Music

Speed and Volume:  The New Standard in Classical Music

So why do so many young interpreters/conductors feel the need to play or force their orchestras to play faster than anybody else?  Since when is speed the prime factor in interpretation?

Francois-Xavier Roth is a case in point.

Here last week to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Roth chose two super-familiar pieces.  One was the C Major Piano Concerto by Mozart, with Benjamin Grosvenor as soloist.

Let’s start with the Mozart.  There were exquisite moments.  The woodwinds were gorgeous.  The piano playing was superb.  Grosvenor is in total charge of his playing; his fingerwork is impeccable, his coloration is nothing short of sumptuous.  He truly captured the spirit, emotion and beauty of the concerto.  Except for the slow middle movement, the famous “Elvira Madigan” music.  Perhaps the pianist’s young age compelled him to drive the triplets a bit much.  They became restless, taking something away from the luxuriousness of the music.  The melody should have floated over the triplets; instead, it felt rushed.

Tempos are individual and unique to the interpreter and the moment.  I understand that.  Other than that, Grosvenor’s playing was truly beautiful. His Moskowski Etude encore was colorful and brilliant.  I would be happy to hear him play other works as well, particularly Scarlatti.

But the Beethoven Fifth Symphony was another matter altogether.

The speed with which this work was played was without any rhyme or reason.  Granted, it made the interpretation sound “fresh.” And indeed, after hearing this symphony played so often that every note is fixed in your memory, head, and every bone inside your body, “fresh” may not be so bad.  It was also very, very loud.  Here and there, a well-placed pianissimo only served to highlight the loud, serving no other purpose.

That the Boston Symphony Orchestra could play at that speed and volume—and play magnificently—is proof (if still necessary) of what a great orchestra it is.  Still, a split note from the brass (the French horn?) at the Saturday night concert was not due to the player, but rather to the speed in which the first movement was going.  It took the orchestra a while to build up compliance with Roth’s unreasonable and needless demand for breathlessness and speed. 

Music has to breathe.  It has to evolve naturally.  Great music has to be organic.  The opening four notes stand not only as an iconic statement, but actually give the whole symphony its drive and emotional impetus.  Done too quickly and breathlessly, the entire work is weakened.  One has to trust Beethoven and not supplant him.

But OMG, it was loud! The ending of the symphony goes on and on endlessly, and for it to work the dynamics need to be structured and layered.  Otherwise it’s no more than an onslaught upon the listener’s ears. 

The audience, needless to say, loved it and couldn’t jump to their feet fast enough.

The opening work of the concert, the overture to “Les Amazones, ou la Fondation de Thebes” by Etienne-Nicolas Mehul, suffered from the same malaise.  Roth does not let the music evolve naturally; it doesn’t breathe, it doesn’t grow, it does not become what it is meant to.  This work isn’t spectacular; it isn’t particularly melodic.  What it is, however, is a series of very interesting harmonic progressions that anticipate music from a much later time.  The harmonies are the centerpiece of this otherwise pedestrian work.  For that to work, one needs to listen, to let the progressions lead you rather than vice versa.  Otherwise, you’ve missed the whole point of this work, and in that case, why bother.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra is still a phenomenal orchestra.  Its players are consummate musicians. One simply cannot hear enough of this artistic and cultural treasure.  Luckily, there are a few concerts left in the series I subscribed to this season. 

But my main complaint is not with the BSO.  It’s bigger than that.  It has to do with the way we hear music—or rather, the way music is all too often presented for us.  Everything is too athletic (classical music is NOT the Olympics, after all).  Too fast, too muscular.  Gentleness, softness, a curved line rather than a sharp spike—these have become synonymous with weakness.  Brash is best, if to judge by the playing of such as Lang Lang and others of his ilk.

Maybe we’ve gotten too used to over-loud music.  Everything is amplified for us_­.  God forbid we should miss the obvious.  The subtle, unfortunately, disappears under the massive blanket of sheer volume and runaway speed.  We’ve gotten too used to overstimulation. Silence frightens us, or, worse, bores us. 

Speed is the new spectacle.

How sad. 

© 2018 by Boaz D. Heilman

Forgettable You: Jean-Frederic Neuburger in Boston

Forgettable You: Jean-Frederic Neuburger in Boston

I was offered a pair of tickets to the Boston Symphony last week.  If the tickets were not a gift, I wouldn't have bought them.  On the program was the Schumann Piano Concerto, which I have heard countless times and am intensely in love with.  I heard it played live countless times, and on recordings probably twice as much.

Enough is enough, I thought.

And I was right.

M. Neuburger is a talented musician, without a doubt.  But if I were Clara Schumann and he came to play this work for me, I would have said, "Very nice, young man; come back again when you are older."

I wonder if M. Neuburger has ever been in love.  Passionately.  Breathlessly.  Rhapsodically.  And I doubt it.

A true artist knows how to translate emotions into his or her artwork.  In this concerto, love has to spread its wings and soar on the wind.  It has to surge and break like waves.  It has to dream.

At this concert, it did nothing of the sort.

Oh, the notes were there all right.  But they went nowhere.  It was a bloodless, dispassionate performance.

Learn to live, M. Neuburger.  Retire from making music for a period of time, listen to the masters (try Dinu Lipatti's recording of this concerto, for one; and there are plenty others).  Most importantly, find yourself a person to love so completely that you desperately want to blend together with that person. If you are lucky, then you will understand, and then you might be able to return to Madame Schumann and remind her of the kind of love Robert had for her.  

Otherwise, don't bother. Your playing will be forgotten and all that work and talent will disappear like so much chaff in the wind.

January 31, 2017

When Great Pianists Irritate The Rest Of Us

When Great Pianists Irritate The Rest Of Us

OK, I’ve got to say it:  Sometimes the “Great Pianists” disappoint me.  I guess I’m thinking of some of their older recordings, when they were young and quite sure of themselves.  Take Rubinstein, for example, a great master if there ever was one; yet what a difference between some of his earlier recordings and the ones he made towards the end of his career.  I cringe when I hear some of his recordings from the early years; yet among his best recordings are the Brahms B-flat Concerto, with Ormandy—I love the cover art of the two older gentlemen—and his last recording playing the Brahms D-minor in Israel with Zubin Mehta conducting. 

Maybe it’s youthful ardor versus wiser maturity, a road all or most of us must take. Or maybe it’s something else, something more inherent in the artist himself.

Take Vladimir Horowitz.  With Horowitz there’s a hyper nervous energy that drives him like a whip. He just can’t play fast enough or simply enough notes at once.  Many of his recordings reflect musical vision that surpasses that of practically any pianist after him and probably before.  His Schumann Fantasy from the Return To Carnegie Hall concert soars with eagles and lulls you with the most achingly intimate finale one could possibly imagine.

Yet on his recording with Ormandy of the Rachmaninov 3^rd, (there are actually two, if I’m not mistaken, one from 1951 and the other from 1978) all I was hearing was acrobatics.  He might as well have been an Olympic athlete, except you could hear the wrong notes and almost visualize the errors he made on the mat, er, keyboard.

The tone is dry and harsh; the concept more overdone baroque than underplayed romantic.

On the recording I heard (judging by the sound, I’m guessing it was the 1951 version), Horowitz made the orchestra disappear, which I guess was a result of the way the engineers miked the recording.  When you can actually hear the orchestra, they sound like a bunch of mice scurrying about.  My guess is Ormandy would never let anyone other than Horowitz get away with making HIS orchestra play like that.  The closing octaves sound as though he can’t wait to get this whole experience over with—and truthfully, that’s how I felt too.

Of course I may just be mentally comparing this recording with the one by Emil Gilels and Andre Cluytens, a fantastic performance in which the orchestra and the piano are perfectly matched in passion, sound and concept. 

So maybe it isn’t a question of age.  At least not all of the time.  I’m sure that age brings about maturity (with most of us), and with that comes richer musicality.  That was definitely the case with Rubinstein.  But with Horowitz, there’s just no accounting.  His Scarlatti sparkles; his Schumann soars.  But his Rach Third just runs away, and that’s a shame.


(c) 2016 by Boaz D. Heilman

(Mostly) French Music at the Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert

(Mostly) French Music at the Boston Symphony Orchestra Concert

Saturday, Jan. 16, 2016

Francois-Xavier Roth, conductor; Renee Fleming, soprano

Program:  

Debussy:  Jeux

Dutilleux:  Le Temps L'horloge

Canteloube: Selections from Songs of the Auvergne

Stravinsky: Petrushka

I was excited to go to this concert because it was my first opportunity to hear Petrushka live.  I heard it on recordings--countless times.  I heard (and played through) the piano version.  But never the orchestral version live.

When I was a teen, I got my hands on the LP of Petrushka played by the Israel Philharmonic with Lorin Maazel conducting.  That was my education for the piece.  I could practically see the fair and the puppets.  It was cinematic and visual.  The fade-ins and fade-outs were perfect.  The rhythm and the meter just so.  This is the performance that is ingrained in my inner ear, and perhaps no other version will ever quite match that.

But there are other reasons why tonight's performance was somewhat disappointing to me.

Let's be clear:  The BSO is a fantastic orchestra. That's a fact. However, I was disappointed by Petrushka. It was bombastic and strangely lacking in nuance (in sound, meter and emotion). The brass section blared uncontrolled, with balance and melody suffering for the hyped up volume. Individually, there was great playing and there were wonderful moments.  Elizabeth Rowe's flute solo was superb, and the tuba was magnificent.  The trumpet section glows.  So it came as an unpleasant surprise then when the last trumpet solo didn't quite make it notewise.  It also wasn't quite menacing enough, but both of these are really the conductor's fault.  Roth's interpretation reached for volume, not nuance.  At moments I felt that the orchestra was uncomfortable with the tempos Roth chose.  I find that so many performers (that includes conductors) simply don't let the music breathe or tell its story.  They force the sound instead of allowing the music to speak for itself.  Listening is the most important part of being a good musician.  The sound doesn't have to go wall-to-wall; you can leave some room for silence at either end of the spectrum (especially the loud end).  And phrasing!  That is so much a function of breathing.  The trumpet solo failed mostly because Roth didn't let it happen.  He forced it.  It wasn't Petrushka's spirit shaking its fist menacingly from the top of the marionette theater--it was some giant dragon trying to issue one last roar and flame.  That's not what it is supposed to be.

 Renee Fleming has a gorgeous voice, but it was not well suited for the dark blocks of sound of the Deutilleux. The Songs of the Auvergne was lovely but weak on character. Ms. Fleming's dark green gown, however, was a beauty.  Entering the stage, the gown seemed almost black. But as Ms. Fleming approached the center of the stage, the color became apparent.  Would that the music was so nuanced.

By far, the jewel of the evening was Jeux by Debussy. The BSO and Francois-Xavier Roth captured the sparkle, the sound bursts, the colors, the sinuous lines, the flames. That was worth the entire concert. Now that showed the orchestra in its best light... er... sound. 

Did I say the BSO is a fantastic orchestra? Because it is.

RIP Vanya

RIP Vanya

in memory of Van Cliburn

2/27/13

A musical giant fell today.

Van Cliburn defined a generation--in fact he set a path for all pianists after him.

"The American Sputnik" launched careers and music competitions.  The Van Cliburn International Competition has been overseeing emerging pianists as one of the most prestigious competitions the world through.  Richard Rodzinski, the director of that competition for more than 2 decades is now the general director of the Tchaikovsky Competition.  It's a direct line.

Two things happened after Van Cliburn (Vanya) won the Tchaikovsky in 1958.  Well, three really.  First obviously is that Van Cliburn became a household name in America and elsewhere (including Israel, where I was at the time 7 years old and had started learning piano).  What that meant was a cultural phenomenon on Elvis Presley and the Beatles' level.  He became the first classical musician who was a superstar, a position that many aspire to but few really reach--yet one which is difficult to sustain for long.  So many have reached it since, and so many have fallen along the way.

Van Cliburn's star blazed and left an indelible mark on culture.

From his time on, pianists practiced differently, and they listened to a new beat out there.  There would be greater clarity in the playing, greater precision of performance, both technically and musically.  Music always listens to other forms of itself and informs itself with the idiom of the time.  It's only natural that music composed and performed in the second half of the twentieth century reflected mechanization, a steadier beat and a more explosive musical vocabulary.  Softer emotions were not necessarily part of this idiom.

Russian pianists emulated the technical prodigiousness of Van Cliburn, and do so still.  So did Juilliard, the leading music school in the US.

A new style of piano playing emerged after Van Cliburn won the Tchaikovsky.  It wasn't out of historical context, of course.  From its inception in the mid-1700's, the history of piano playing shows increase in virtuosic demand.  Exercises became etudes, and these became more than just finger practice.  Etudes--grand, symphonic, transcendental--became musical gems in their own right.  The art of virtuosic performance developed to an unprecedented extent in the second half of the 20th century, perhaps at the expense of the kind of emotional commitment that earlier interpreters had shown.

It's an age-old conflict between form and content, and somewhere inbetween the two lies art.

What Van Cliburn gave to the Russians and the rest of the world was a new interpretation of the grand romantics, and though it was fresh and technically brilliant, it was also steeped in the old romanticism.  His Tchaikovsky Concerto performance shows a budding romanticism unburdened by the angst of the Old World.  It is fresh and supple playing, and it's no wonder the Russians went totally wild for him.  Van Clibusn gave them what Elvis gave us.

What happened in the twenty years since his explosive performance in Moscow and his retirement in 1978 (there were "comebacks" as well as a sort of command performance here and there)?

Some say that he was a perfectionist and could never reach the standard he set for himself, so he was never happy with his playing.

Some say that he was burned out.  you can only do so many concerts a year.  There are only so many times you can play certain pieces before losing interest and becoming bored with them.  And boredom, as we know, is the first sin of music making.

There's much more that can be said of Van Cliburn's playing, and I'm sure much more will be said in the next few weeks, months and probably years.

Thanks for inspiring so many of us, Mr. Cliburn.  We are full of respect for you and grateful for what you've done for us.

Rest in Peace.

(c) 2013 by Boaz D. Heilman

A Perlman Event

A Perlman Event

Itzhak Perlman, violin, and Rohan De Silva, piano

Celebrity Series of Boston

November 23, 2014

A Perlman concert is an event.  Everybody knows it, including the esteemed violinist, who is the current undisputed premier artist of the instrument. 

Perlman brings a variety of audiences to hear him play.  There are, of course, the representatives of the Jewish/Israeli community who come to hear one of their own.  There are also those for whom Perlman represents the ultimate (and probably last) great violinist of the old, Eastern European tradition of playing, the kind where schmaltz is not disdained, where playing a musical line isn’t enough in itself—you have to make it sing, tell a story, convey an emotion.  Rhythm is biological, not digital.  Playing in the emotion-less style of the 21^st century just doesn’t cut it for this audience.  And if you aren’t dramatic, you might as well step off the stage, you don’t belong on one.

There are those who come to hear Perlman because he symbolizes empowerment over disability.  Seeing him walk onstage using his crutches, having his violin handed to him by a concertmaster takes your breath away even before he checks the already-perfect tuning.  And when he plays—he dances, he flies, and he swings you, his partner, off your feet.

And of course there are those who come to hear Perlman play because he is such a great musician, his insights into the music are such that you can only be inspired to understand the greatness behind Beethoven or Brahms.

He is also a great showman, enjoying his little jokes and gestures; he enjoys making his audience laugh.

Yesterday afternoon, Itzhak Perlman played his many audiences almost as well as he played his violin.  He had something for everyone.

Perlman has a mobile chair to take him to his place to the side of the piano.  Technology makes the entrance less dramatic, but also less painful to watch.  Perlman settled in, and the concert began.

The audience was often restless.  Sunday afternoons either bring out the dark, dusky kind of playing you would expect in a Faulkner den, or else the lighter, afternoon-tea schmaltz you could expect in the lobby of an Austrian resort.  Perlman gave us both.

The Vivaldi with which he opened, Sonata in A Major for violin and continuo, Opus 2, no. 2, RV 31, unfortunately showed Perlman not quite at home with the style.  The Adagio recitative was probably the best, allowing Perlman to be a bit more emotive and dramatic than in the other movements.

The Schumann Fantasiestucke Op. 73, lacked youthful sparkle.  Possibly the piano sounded a bit thunky, but the playing could have been more expansive, even darker at times, while still maintaining the embrace of all life that was so characteristic of Schumann, even at this point in his life, which saw an outburst of creativity after a period of illness.  Originally written for clarinet, Schumann indicated that Fantasiestucke could also be played on viola or cello—and maybe that’s the darker sound that I would have wished for, a sound that also would have allowed brighter points of light.

The Beethoven Sonata in C-minor, Op. 30, no. 2, was another story altogether.  It was Beethoven as Beethoven should be played.  Voraciously, beautifully, virtuosity alternating with lyricism.  The collaboration between Perlman and Rohan De Silva was wonderful.

The Ravel Sonata No. 2 in G Major was, for me, the highlight of the afternoon.  Influenced by orientalism as well as by jazz and blues, the sonata shows a working out of harmonies and rhythms that Ravel would later use in the D Major Piano Concerto (for the left hand). The sonata expects peak technical prowess from both instrumentalists, collaboration in color, texture and rhythms that either works or doesn’t—and yesterday it did.  It was nothing less than marvelous.

Still, not everyone in the audience is a lover of late Ravel.  You could sense the unease of the audience with the jarring 20^th century harmonies.  But when Perlman played a Jascha Heiftetz transcription of a Chopin Mazurka, you could hear a pin drop.  This is what they came for, and the audience imbibed it. 

Fritz Kreisler provided the salon music and schmaltz; it isn’t my cup of tea, but if you’re going to reach every audience member and you are Perlman, you are going to play the heck out of these pieces, and so he did.

Then came John Williams’ Theme from Schindler’s List.  Not a dry eye in the audience for that one. 

There was more, and there could have been more.  Following the Ravel, Perlman chose the music from what he and De Silva brought out with them from backstage.  With his customary good-natured humor, Perlman gave us the concert we came to hear.  He is one of the world’s greatest musicians, showmen and human beings, and there was love in the air—the way it should be.

It was an event to attend.

© 2014 by Boaz D. Heilman