Haydn: Julian Schwarz, cello, Christophe Chagnard, cond., Northwest Sinfonietta, Rialto Theater, Tacoma, 18.02.2007 (BJ)

 

Mark my words: a notable player made his bow on the world’s cello concerto stage this week. The setting was the modest occasion of a Sunday-afternoon family concert in Tacoma’s Rialto Theater. But backed by polished and spirited support from conductor Christophe Chagnard and his Northwest Sinfonietta, Julian Schwarz proved himself a soloist of huge talent and even greater potential.

In the first movement of Haydn’s C-major Concerto–probably the composer’s most successful work in the genre apart from the delightful one for trumpet–sumptuous tone and crystal-clear articulation were only part of the story. What made Schwarz’s playing especially exciting was the urgency of his rhythm, which constantly nudged the music forward without ever sacrificing coherence of phrasing or security of ensemble. Such an approach foretold that, after an equally successful treatment of the lyrical slow movement, the finale would be a vivid affair, and that was indeed the case. Soloist and conductor worked together at a headlong pace that took every risk in the book, yet once again there was a sense of total security in the execution, and even at this speed Schwarz had time to sing his phrases with ample eloquence of line and sound.

Barely past his 16th birthday even now, Schwarz, the son of the Seattle Symphony’s music director Gerard Schwarz, had earned the opportunity to give his first full concerto performance with orchestra by winning first prize in the Northwest Sinfonietta’s annual Youth Concerto Competition. Founded in 1991 by the Parisian-born Chagnard, the orchestra programmed the prize performance in the second half of a concert that began less auspiciously with a hybrid musico-dramatic presentation based on Connie Hampton Connally’s children’s book The Orchestra in the Living Room.

It would be churlish to expend much energy on denigrating this well-intentioned effort to bring children into contact with classical music. Suffice it to say that the play, at least as presented, was seriously deficient in any kind of artistic or intellectual rigor, as witnessed by the spectacle of youngsters supposedly playing instruments without moving a finger, and by the participation of a supposed “Uncle Zoltan” with a generalized middle-European accent that no Zoltan worthy of his Hungarian blood ever spoke in. And rigor is no less essential–indeed, may well be thought even more essential–in appealing to an inexperienced audience than in preaching to the already converted.

I hope only that the many children in the audience will have gone home with the sound of the musical excerpts in their ears. The pieces, featuring several orchestra members as soloists, were well chosen and equally well played, and the cello had an early moment of glory in a beautiful reading of The Swan, from Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals, by Mara Finkelstein–appropriately enough, the widow of Schwarz’s first teacher, David Tokonogui. Her rich sound revealed that the Rialto Theater’s acoustics are very friendly to music (though it was surely a mistake to expect the principal horn, in a brief Mozart concerto excerpt, to make her mark while playing just in front of a heavy curtain at the back of the stage).

That stage, as it turned out, was set for a triumphant second half. Julian Schwarz is destined to rank among the major cellists of the 21st century. Mark my words.

 

Bernard Jacobson