Rimsky-Korsakov, Pärt, and Sibelius: Eri Klas, cond., Maria Larionoff and Elisa Barston, violins, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 15.02.2007 (BJ)

 

There are conductors whose fame outstrips their musical talents; I could doubtless raise a hackle or two by naming some of my candidates for that accounting – but let it pass, let it pass. There are those happy maestros whose reputations match their gifts. And then there are the conductors who go on making wonderful music year after year without ever becoming household names.

Of that last phenomenon, Eri Klas is a prime example. Technically adept, master of a wide repertoire that includes many contemporary works, and richly endowed with musical sensitivity and the sort of charisma that communicates unmistakably with audiences, the Estonian conductor gave a characteristic program with the Seattle Symphony, and led it with equally characteristic conviction and illuminating results.

After a reading of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture that gave full value to its festive solemnity and made it sound much less tinselly than it is sometimes thought to be, Klas offered a piece by one of those compatriot composers he has tirelessly championed. Tabula Rasa is not one of Arvo Pärt’s more substantial creations – my wife reminds me that Jírí Kylian’s Netherlands Dance Theater made a fine ballet out of it, which seems about right, in the sense that this quasi-minimal music needs supplementing from extra-musical sources to strengthen its rather thin message. But it was very well played, both by the orchestral complement of strings and prepared piano, and by acting concertmaster Maria Larionoff and principal second violin Elisa Barston.

For his second half, Klas turned to Estonia’s cross-Baltic neighbor, Finland, for two works by Sibelius. The Swan of Tuonela featured a compelling shaped english-horn solo by Stefan Farkas, and the conductor emphasized the drama that underlies this ostensibly innocent score, drawing a more telling contribution from the bass drum than most performances allow. But it was the Seventh Symphony that constituted the real gem of the evening.

Rather as Eric Blom remarked about the Mozart piano concertos, you always tend to think of the last Sibelius symphony you heard as your favorite. In the case of the Seventh Symphony, that judgement might well carry particular conviction. Again, it was Klas’s revelatory way with texture that showed what a fundamental role true polyphony plays in Sibelius’s late style–and certainly it was clear from his brilliantly cohesive reading that the composer of the First and Second Symphonies, attractive as those works are, was far from possessing yet the awesome powers of thematic synthesis and structural logic that shaped the Seventh. Ko-ichiro Yamamoto’s projection of what I suppose counts as the main theme, that rarest and most eloquent of trombone solos, was exemplary in its grandeur and clarity, and, just as in Bruckner’s Ninth the week before, the strings and the rest of the orchestra covered themselves with glory.

 

Bernard Jacobson