Yesterday evening pianist Garrick Ohlsson performed Mozart's 9th piano concerto with the Seattle Symphony, under the baton of Conductor Laurette Gerard Schwarz. After intermission, Schwarz led the orchestra through a performance of Bruckner's 4th symphony.
Throughout the concerto the sound of the orchestra was very warm, something that it appeared was being brought about deliberately by Maestro Schwarz. He seemed to cushion every movement of his throughout the piece. In contrast, the piano sounded a little bit on the harsher side. Ohlsson played fine, but I didn't feel it was a groundbreaking performance by any means. And during the third movement he began to flub some of the fast runs, always a grave disappointment to me.
On the whole it was a fine performance of the work, but it was not very memorable. Once again the orchestra/soloist displayed how difficult it is to convincingly deliver a piece of Mozart.
I was at a concert around the same time last year where Schwarz conducted Mozart's 24th piano concerto and Mahler's 1st symphony, and I remember the same phenomenon happening that night; that even though I'm clear the Mozart is a superior work, the Mahler was more engaging due to the ease at which the orchestra is able to give a convincing performance.
I don't particularly like Bruckner's 4th symphony, and yet I was still less frequently bored throughout its sixty-four minutes than I was during the thirty minutes of the piano concerto. Schwarz commanded a stern grip over the orchestra throughout the work, bringing out all sorts of subtleties, exercising great dynamic contrasts, and drawing a nice arc throughout the four movements.
At some point during the third movement, Christine began to laugh about something. I looked all over the stage but couldn't find what might be the source. She was beginning to have a really hard time not bursting out laughing completely, and I became really curious what was going on. Finally I found what I thought was the source. The sixth violinist in the second violin section looked like he was a small child entering disneyland, his face completely aglow, especially when the piece would get loud and the strings would have fast repeated notes. He seemed he would burst with joy, or go rocketing into the air. Whenever the piece would rev up, his face said "Yes!!! Here we go!!!" You'd have to see it to really grasp the extent of elation and exuberance. I don't think any literary description can do it justice.
However, it turned out that that wasn't was Christine was laughing about. Toward the end of the fourth movement, for the first time during the work I looked around the auditorium and surveyed the state of the audience. They looked like they were about to die of boredom. One old woman was completely collapsed back in her chair fast asleep, another man was chewing on his thumb, all over the auditorium there was constant, restless motion; people shifting position, rubbing their foreheads, collapsing onto their partners. It was quite a spectacle. By this point they had heard an hour of Bruckner non-stop, and I'm sure many of them didn't know exactly how much longer it was going to be.
I had asked Christine beforehand if she had brought a book along to read during the Bruckner, but she actually enjoyed it quite a bit, as did I. It seems though that my joke was not very far off for a great deal of the audience. The bizarre thing was that they still gave a standing ovation at the end of the symphony.
It's not surprising that there is no Bruckner at all in the 2013-2014 season. Bruckner just isn't in right now. Next week we see HK Gruber conducting Antheil, Gruber, Bernstein and Stravinsky!
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