Berlioz, Harbison, and Tchaikovsky: Lawrence Renes, cond., Jordan Anderson, double bass, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 02.11.2006

 

and,

 

Brahms, Bartók, and Stravinsky: Lawrence Renes, cond., Leonidas Kavakos, violin, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 12.11.2006 (BJ)

 

Two-week guest engagements are a rarity with the Seattle Symphony, but the young Dutch conductor Lawrence Renes had clearly earned the compliment paid him with this, his third engagement with the orchestra. I reviewed his last appearance here toward the end of last season, with a program of Copland, Schoenfield, and Beethoven, very enthusiastically, and this return visit fully matched the spectacular impression he made then.

Along with the sterling work Renes drew from the orchestra, the collaboration of two excellent soloists helped to make both programs the success they were. “Excellent” is actually a feeble word to describe the Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos, who gave a performance of Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto that had me going back in memory more than 40 years, to that underrated master violinist György Pauk, in search of one that came close to matching its quality. Kavakos is at least as complete a master of his instrument. Indeed, I do not think there is another violinist before the public today whose tone is as perfectly homogeneous from top to bottom of the instrument’s range–Kavakos makes his 1692 “Falmouth” Stradivarius sing with as rich a luster in the higher reaches of the E string as at the sonorous bottom of the G. With this goes a clarity of articulation, grace of phrasing, and accuracy of intonation that made Bartók’s concerto sound (if I may say so) an even better work than it is.

I know there are good judges who would place it among the very greatest violin concertos of the 20th century, and there are certainly some wonderful things in it, from the tigerish intensity and rhythmic zest of the first movement’s main theme, to some truly magical passages in the early stages of the central slow movement. Yet it seems to me that there is a certain stop-go character about the music that precludes real formal fluency, and there are also some thematic ideas that seem too facilely spatchcocked in from earlier Bartók works. In common, moreover, with one or two of his other late compositions, it differs from his greatest music in rather the way a filet mignon differs from a good rib-eye or New York strip–there is a certain reduction of challenge, with ease of mastication and a touch of blandness doing duty for the more satisfying chewiness and intense flavor of towering masterpieces like the Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, the first two piano concertos, and several of the string quartets. With Kavakos and Renes in charge, however, it came across (one momentary glitch aside) with consistent and compelling vividness. Having now experienced Kavakos in music ranging from Mozart by way of Sibelius to Bartók, I would give much to hear him in the Nielsen concerto, which already figures in his repertoire, and in Shostakovich No. 1, while he would surely be a superb interpreter of the great violin concertos of Elgar and Frank Martin, and of those by such contemporaries as H.K. Gruber, Robin Holloway, and Jonathan Lloyd.

If I give Kavakos’s performance pride of place in reviewing concerts that featured two soloists, it is not because Jordan Anderson, in the previous week’s program, played any less than splendidly. It is rather that, by the side of works by such as Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Bartók, and Stravinsky, I find it hard less than two weeks later to keep a very strong impression of John Harbison’s so-titled Concerto for Bass Viol and Orchestra present to my mind. Harbison, now approaching his 68th birthday, is one of the better composers currently writing in the United States, and his new concerto, commissioned by the International Society of Bassists and a consortium of US orchestras, is no less gracefully conceived or skillfully executed than he has led us to expect of him. I liked best about it the lucidity of its extended tonal idiom, the rhythmic quirkiness of the soloist’s first entries, and the way the composer combines the solo part with a variety of partnering ensembles so that it feels like a member of several congenial families. But as the three movements progressed, it seemed to me that the material grew less and less individual, and final impression was somewhat short of character. Useful as the piece may be as an addition to the instrument’s sparse repertoire, it has nothing like the complexity of inspiration of Hans Werner Henze’s concerto or the communicative clarity of the one by the late English composer Wilfred Josephs. Both of those, incidentally, I heard premiered by Gary Karr, who is regrettably no longer performing in public. They may well be pieces Anderson should take a look at, and certainly the assurance of technique and musical acumen the orchestra’s principal bass revealed on this occasion showed him worthy to be discussed on that great virtuoso’s exalted plane.

The Royal Hunt and Storm excerpt from Berlioz’s Les Troyens and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony in the first program, and a delectable pair of Brahms Hungarian Dances at the start of the second, demonstrated Renes’s command of romantic styles as surely as Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony last season had established his classical credentials. The Berlioz shimmered with forest atmosphere and human passion, and, when the storm broke, exploded mightily. Renes’s Tchaikovsky gave full value to the work’s powerful freight of emotion without ever degenerating into exaggeration–the naggingly syncopated subordinate theme in the first movement was a marvel restraint coupled with eloquence. In both works, John Cerminaro shaped his crucial horn solos with characteristic firmness and sensitivity, if with a tad less than his accustomed sumptuousness of tone. The Brahms was delivered with infectious warmth and slancio.

Throughout these repertoire staples, Renes reminded me of Heinrich Neuhaus’s perceptive comment on his pupil Sviatoslav Richter, to the effect that “his rhythm is at the same time perfectly strict and perfectly free.” And the conductor’s visit ended with a realization of Stravinsky’s Petrushka (in the 1947 revision) that was totally compelling. Years ago, the musicologist Sir Donald Tovey drew a revealing distinction between Schubert’s and Loewe’s treatments of the Erlkönig legend. Where Loewe, he pointed out, being a skilled composer of the second rank, and seeing that the child didn’t really hear the Erlkönig singing, replaced his songs with simple emblematic major chords, Schubert, the far more profound genius, saw that the songs were real to the child, and thus essential to the impact of the story, and rendered them with a succession of seductive tunes. In rather the same way, though the three principal characters in Stravinsky’s ballet are puppets and “not real people,” to them their passions are utterly real–and Renes made them seem so, by combining incisive rhythm and phrasing with a scrupulous avoidance of caricature, with the result that the piece emerged for this listener as a much more gripping human experience than it usually is. Again, the orchestra responded as if instinctively to his every urging, with finely colored sonorities, irresistibly propulsive rhythms, and accomplished solos from Kimberly Russ as pianist, David Gordon as principal trumpet, and too many other individuals to mention.

Renes’s musical achievements in these two weeks, and his evident popularity with the orchestra, raise an interesting question, especially since it is rumored that he has been intensively wined and dined by members of the Symphony board. It looks very much as if he is being seen as a potential successor to Gerard Schwarz as music director. The talk around town suggests that Schwarz’s most recent contract renewal is likely to be the last, and that he will step down in 2011. Given my admiration and affection for him as both musician and man, given his enormous achievement in raising the Seattle Symphony from ordinary provincial quality to respected international standing, and considering also his wider contribution to Seattle’s musical life and the community as a whole, I shall be sad when that day comes. But come it presumably must, if only because, in the anomalous world of the symphony orchestra (a curious beast, born of a hierarchical society, and striving now to thrive in a society where the requirements of democracy must be, or must at least seem to be, served), any tenure that lasts a quarter of a century is bound in the end to provoke the kinds of tensions that we have seen in recent reports about conductor-orchestra relations in the Seattle Symphony.

Taking this into account, I can think of few conductors anywhere as well qualified to succeed Schwarz as this 36-year-old Dutchman, who seems to be no less mature, amiable, intelligent, and diplomatic as a person than he is gifted and versatile as a musician. But the orchestra’s board and administration had better beware. He cannot be expected to wait around for years. Such a combination of talent, charm, and integrity being not that common, there is probably many another orchestra in the world that would be delighted to welcome Renes as its chief conductor. An appointment for him in Seattle could not actually begin before 2011, but in the absence of some clear declaration of intent in the relatively near future, the chance of bringing him here could well be lost. And that would be a pity.

 

Bernard Jacobson