February 15th, 2014: Morlot Conducts the "Fantastique"

I'm really not feeling like writing a review at the moment, so I'm simply going to talk about yesterday's concert the way I would to a friend, and it will likely come out as a very short blog post.

Ludovic Morlot was conducting the Seattle Symphony last night, and they performed Chabrier's Bourrée fantasque, Schumann's Cello Concerto in A minor and Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. Xavier Phillips was the soloist for the cello concerto.

The Chabrier was a somewhat catchy piece of music, but overall I found it slightly silly. It was over after six or seven minutes, and the stage was reset for the cello concerto.

I am extremely familiar with the Schumann cello concerto because my brother is a cellist, and so I enjoyed it more than I might have if it was a piece I was less intimate with. Xavier Phillips was not a great cellist, but he was adequate, and I particularly enjoyed the first movement because of my familiarity with it and the fact that the music is very beautiful. I was surprised to find myself not very familiar with the second movement, but in the third movement I was again very close to it.

After the concerto was over intermission began. And after intermission was over, Morlot returned to the stage to conduct the Symphonie fantastique by Berlioz. I had only listened to the piece a few times before yesterday evening, and so I was not familiar enough with the music to fully appreciate it. However, I feel like this would not be one of my favorite pieces no matter how much I got to know it. There were parts here and there that I enjoyed, but overall this piece for me played the role of capping off an evening which was something less than inspiring.

That's what it is really. I just wasn't very inspired by any of the concert. The only reason I'm here writing this is because I've written a post for every concert that I've been to since January of last year, and I want to be consistent. But there isn't really anything about yesterday's concert that is worth talking about. At least not for me. The orchestra appeared to be in good form under their music director, and I'm sure that a lover of the Symphony fantastique would have been enraptured by this performance.

Next week is Bach's St. Matthew Passion!

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February 1st, 2014: Shostakovich & Adams

Last night's concert was absolutely splendid. Olari Elts led the Seattle Symphony in John Adams' The Chairman Dances: Foxtrot for Orchestra, Adams' arrangement of Liszt's The Black Gondola, and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 9 in E-flat major. Alexander Melnkov soloed in Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major, also led by Elts.

This was a very welcome contrast to the last two concerts we heard at the Symphony. Olari Elts was an excellent conductor who brought out the best of the Seattle Symphony with a refined, powerful and skilled technique, and Alexander Melnikov brought an authentic and masterful artistry to the piano.

The program opened with John Adams' The Chairman Dances: Foxtrot for Orchestra. I hadn't listened to it at all in advance, but I enjoyed it overall. For the first several minutes the novelty of Adams' unique orchestration techniques combined with his signature ostinato rhythms kept my attention, and as the piece went along it contained just enough variation and deviation from the repetitive motifs of the first few minutes to mostly keep me interested. I say mostly because it did lose my attention from time to time, but overall I enjoyed the piece. Olari Elts was able to demonstrate his competence as a leader throughout the work, holding the orchestra together through difficult syncopated rhythms, and guiding them from beginning to end through a convincing rendition of the work. Though I'd never heard the piece before, I could tell it was a very professional performance.

Next came Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2. This was the piece both my fiancé and I were most excited to hear, most specifically the second movement. We both really love that second movement, and personally I had very little hope that the live concert would live up to our hopes and expectations, because when you really love something it's very easy to find a performance of it slightly lacking.

Alexander Melnikov demonstrated a social awkwardness from the first moment he appeared on stage. He seemed unsure of whether to walk on or not, and seemed a little bit like he was in the zone. Perhaps he has some kind of high functioning autism like aspergers. In any case, it didn't interfere with his ability to play the piano. Olari Elts kicked off the first movement at a brisk tempo, and when Melnikov entered on the piano he displayed a pure, authentic and compelling musicality which breathed life into the music and made it speak crystal clear. The orchestra again displayed their best work under Elts' leadership, and Melnikov was Elts' equal in mastery of his craft; together they led a truly wonderful performance of Shostakovich's piano concerto.

The first movement was over soon enough, and by now I had reasonably high hopes for the second movement. But not nearly high enough.

What happened next is something that I would give up all my tickets for the rest of the season to experience even once more.

Olari Elts gave the orchestra a broad gesture that was both firm and sweeping, and the strings began the second movement. It was much slower than I expected. And much more magical. It was as if every single musician on stage loved that movement as much as we did, and every single player knew that this is a precious thing, to be given the utmost focus and dedicated care. The tone in the strings was liquid gold, their musical expression suited to tug on the heartstrings of even the most hardened audience member. Elts was leading them through this waking dream with subtlety, depth and mastery. Every player was right there with him, keeping the music as fluid and natural as a stream of water, even at the difficultly slow (and hauntingly beautiful) tempo that they were taking. And the dynamic contrasts that Elts elicited from the orchestra were utterly sublime and to chilling effect.

My chest constricts with the memory of the almost unbearable beauty even as I write this. I feel I would do anything to hear that performance again.

By the time Melnikov began the first piano entrance, I was in heaven. The lush, warm velvet ground had been lain, and the eternal beauty had been thoroughly established. Within that, Melnikov's first notes were like a white angel entering the scene, a perfect being of crystalline beauty set into motion to dance with the utmost grace amongst the endless warmth and unconditional love emanating from the orchestra. His playing was utterly superb, and together with the orchestra under Elts astounding leadership, they embarked on the journey through this precious gem that Shostakovich has given us. It was an experience I will never forget, and at times joy simply overflowed in me and a smile broke out. Throughout intermission and the rest of the evening I was aching to go back to that heaven they had created.

At the end of the second movement Elts led the orchestra directly into the third, which is naturally in a much more upbeat tempo, more similar to the first. Melnikov missed a few notes in some of the virtuosic passages, but it mattered little, for his musicality was authentic, and the orchestra supporting him kept up their stellar playing. There were a few moments in the third movement where soloist and orchestra weren't quite in sync, but for the most part it was a great performance. There was even a moment where Melnikov wiped his face with his handkerchief in rhythm to the music in the orchestra. That was priceless and wonderful. Anyways, the concerto came to an end with a bang, and then intermission began.

We walked around the lobby, and I continually lamented the inability to replay the performance of the second movement. It was truly, truly remarkable.

The second half of the program began with John Adams' arrangement of Liszt's piano work The Black Gondola. There's a very interesting story behind this work, but long story short, it was inspired by Liszt's obsession with the idea of a black gondola carrying Richard Wagner's dead body.

Right towards the beginning of the piece, when it was still rather quiet, an audience member coughed/sneezed very loudly, which unfortunately set Christine and I off on a laughing fit. I was able to control myself fairly quickly and just keep my eyes on the orchestra and not laugh, which helped her to stop laughing eventually as well. But the consequence of this was that our focus was not as much on the music as it should have been for the first few minutes of the piece.

The work really caught my attention the first time it really took motion and seemed to describe the gondola moving along. A haunting, dark melody in the violins was accompanied by slow, churning music in the lower instruments, and it seemed to describe the morbid scene perfectly. The piece then built up and reached a climax with soaring melodies in the violins, but it maintained its dark character throughout. In retrospect I was quite impressed by the work and am definitely going to give it another listen. It goes without saying that the orchestra and Olari Elts performed this piece at the same excellent level as everything else.

And finally, Shostakovich's 9th symphony brought the evening to a close. Before performing The Black Gondola, Elts actually spoke to the audience about the Shostakovich symphony, and he said that while it often appears to be a light piece full of jokes and what not, that he thinks the key to the piece is actually in the Bassoon solo in the fourth movement, and in the second movement. And he said that looking from there, it appears that the happy, humorous moments of the symphony are actually a false happiness, like somebody "making your smile bigger with their knife." The audience chuckled at that.

I performed this work with the Bremerton Symphony back in 2009 when I was in the Academy Chamber Orchestra under Alan Futterman. He took several of the ACO students with him when he conducted concerts in Bremerton, and this was on one of the programs. So I have a kind of history with the piece, and a certain fondness for it.

Both conductor and orchestra were solid throughout the piece. The upbeat, "humorous" moments were crisp and lively, and the dark moments were dark. Seth Krimsky's Bassoon solo in the fourth movement was excellent. All in all it was a very good performance of the symphony, in keeping with the quality of the rest of the evening.

It is concerts like these that keep me coming back, and I wish there were more of these and less of the strikeouts.

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