Mendelssohn and Brahms: Gerard Schwarz, cond., Stefan Jackiw, violin, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 08.10.2006 (BJ)

 

In one of its Sunday-afternoon concert series, titled “Musically Speaking,” the Seattle Symphony follows the practice of jettisoning one work from the previous evening’s program to make room for spoken introductions by the conductor. In this instance, I was happy to go without Copland’s Music for the Theatre–not in my view one of the composer’s best works–and listen instead to Gerard Schwarz talking about Mendelssohn’s E-minor Violin Concerto and Brahms’s Third Symphony. It is no secret that there has been some tension recently between the music director and a faction among his players, but there was no trace of that in his thoroughly amiable by-play with the orchestra members. More importantly, the way he explained aspects of the music to the audience was as fresh and genuinely illuminating as any such presentation I have previously encountered. I have known those two works pretty well for more than half a century, but I too learned something from Schwarz’s comments and from the adjusted excerpts that he had the musicians play: in particular, how the deletion of syncopated inner parts from the texture can transform and indeed emasculate the entire effect of a passage–a lesson that makes abundantly clear why the composer put them there in the first place.

The performances of both works, too, were almost entirely satisfying. The first movement of the Brahms poses the biggest problems for a conductor. Here, I felt that the 6/4 meter was not realized quite as propulsively as it needs to be; my ear at times registered six rather too independent beats to the bar, instead of the two compound beats implied by the time-signature. After this, however, all was most emphatically well. The Andante flowed much more persuasively, the Poco allegretto intermezzo was both graceful and eloquent, and the dramatic finale, enhanced by suitably awe-inspiring sonorities from the trombone section, built up a powerful head of steam.

The orchestra had sounded equally fine in the Mendelssohn concerto, in partnership with the 21-year-old Boston-born violinist Stefan Jackiw. I had already had occasion to admire his work when I reviewed a recording of the first movement of Paganini’s First Violin Concerto that he made more than five years ago with Benjamin Zander and the New England Conservatory Youth Philharmonic, and it was clear from his accomplished work in the Mendelssohn that he has used the intervening period with commendable seriousness and dedication. This was not the most note-perfect performance you could imagine–though I hasten to add that Jackiw is certainly a virtuoso of a high order–but the sense behind the notes was conveyed with a conviction far preferable to any arid avoidance of technical risk. The fast movements had passion and mercurial wit, and the richness and beauty of the soloist’s tone, allied with boldly conceived phrasing, ensured that the central Andante achieved the full measure of its poetic and lyrical potential. Even among the thickly populated ranks of talented young violinists now before the public, this newest arrival bids fair to take a leading place.

 

Bernard Jacobson