This was a concert I was looking forward to for a long time, as it was almost entirely great romantic music, with only one contemporary piece right at the beginning of the program. The program consisted of Elliott Carter's "Instances," which he composed for Ludovic Morlot, Brahms' 4th Symphony, Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor, and Rossini's William Tell Overture. The concert was played in that order, which was reminiscent of early 20th-century programming where the major work would go on the first half of the program and the evening would end with an upbeat overture of some kind. This is actually quite interesting, because it is actually better to end with the serious work; in a sense, ending with an upbeat overture is to say that the evening has to end with a cheesy bang to matter what. The more modern development of opening with the overture and closing with the major work is more sophisticated I would say, so I'm glad to see that such a development was made throughout the course of the 20th century.
Unfortunately my girlfriend Christine (my regular date to concerts) was tied up with work last night, so I took my dad instead. The first two seats on the right side of the Founders Tier opened up Friday night (U-1 and U-2) so I was able to exchange into those Saturday afternoon as soon as the phone lines opened. My dad really enjoyed the concert, and found it to be a wonderful collection of great music.
Elliott Carter's "Instances" was pretty much exactly what I expected it to be. He wrote it at 103, and I had read that it has a more youthful flare to it than some of his earlier works, and that it's semi-digestible relative to other contemporary music, so I expected something not too painful to listen to. For an eight minute piece, it was amusing enough. Any longer and it would have gotten obnoxious.
Once that was over, they reset the stage for the Brahms Symphony. They had the second violins sitting across from the first violins, and then the violas to the left of the first violins and the cellos to the right of the second violins. The way it all came together, the cellist Walter Gray ended up sitting smack in the center of all the strings (which also seemed packed unusually close together), with his giant curly grey hair sticking out above everyone else.
Morlot led the orchestra in a very solid performance of the Brahms symphony. The tone was clear and present throughout, and the musicality of the strings in particular was quite engaging. I did realize though, throughout the course of the piece, that this symphony is not one of my particular favorite pieces of music. While sitting there I was thinking that it seemed like a very good performance, and yet I wasn't riveted. I then remembered that I've never been particularly riveted listening to recordings of it either, so that put to rest fears of the orchestra's performance being the culprit in my enjoyment of it. There's something about a Brahms symphony that's hard to explain. It's clearly fantastic, brilliant, beautiful music, but personally it lacks something for me. Perhaps its because he was a classicist who was writing classically oriented music within a romantic framework (or romantically oriented music within a classical framework?). In that sense, we lose both pure romanticism and pure classicism in his music.
The most memorable event of intermission was hearing the english horn player on stage practicing a passage from Richard Wagner's opera Götterdämmerung, the fourth opera in his Ring Cycle. I imagine there's a good chance that this will be the same player who will perform it with the Seattle Opera in August, but still, that's a bit early to be practicing it, no?
After intermission, Nicholas Angelich came on stage to perform Schumann's Piano Concerto. He was about twenty years older than his photo in the program, which my dad found very amusing. But when he sat down at the piano and the piece began, I really felt that Schumann is definitely a greater composer than Brahms. Schumann's music seems more emotionally intense to me, and it speaks more directly with unapologetically beautiful gestures, phrases and harmonies. I felt that Angelich's sound was a bit on the harsher side, but I don't know very much about this particular concerto, or about Angelich, or about the piano being used, so I couldn't say why it may have sounded that way or whether it was intentional. He exercised a very solid hand over the keys though, and it was a powerful performance.
I think it was when Morlot came on stage to conduct the Rossini at the end of the evening that my dad expressed a very funny observation of him, which I felt was right on. He said something like "he's like a little elf. He comes springing on stage, with really light footsteps, and he's really short." I was incredibly amused by this, and it's quite true. He comes bouncing out, smiling, on the balls of his feet, with that tuft of hair slightly untamed on his head.
The Rossini overture begins with the cello section alone. Efe Baltacigil, the principal cellist, opened the overture with a solo line, and was soon accompanied by the rest of the cello section. As usual, his playing was incredible, and when other cellists began to take over the solo line, the difference in tone quality and expressiveness was undeniable. It was like having red and blue placed before you and being asked "can you see a difference?" Baltacigil would play part of a solo line, and when it would get traded over to another player, it almost sounded like going from a teacher to a student. A good student, but relative to Baltacigil a student nonetheless.
The evening ended with a bang (the end of the William Tell overture), and then my dad and I spent a few minutes checking out different seating locations on the tier to see what it would be like to sit a little further back. Admittedly we would have been able to see Angelich's face better if we had been sitting a box or two back, and we would have also had a more full-on view of the orchestra. But sitting right at the front puts you practically on the stage, very close to the musicians, which feels amazing, and it also allows you to see much more of the conductor's face than you can from anywhere else. So it's a toss-up I guess.
Anyways, next up is "Love Stories" on Saturday, February 16th, featuring Fauré, Mozart, Szymanowski and Bizet!
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