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Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Opening Concert 2007/8 Season: Wagner, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninov, Sarah Chang (violin), Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Bramwell Tovey (cond.), The Orpheum, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 29.9.2007 (MBr)

 

Ten weeks into a bitter civic strike that has brought a summer of discontent to Vancouverites there had been fears this opening concert would not take place, at least in the publicly owned Orpheum, the venue for most VSO concerts. But not even the inclement weather, so suddenly changeable in the Pacific Northwest, and picketing strikers could take the gloss off a superb concert that united un-reined in virtuosity and old-fashioned orchestral opulence,

Bramwell Tovey may be British by birth, but he is more likely to be guest conducting the New York Philharmonic than he is a British orchestra. And the Vancouver Symphony, for some years the musical fiefdom of that Austrian titan, Bruno Walter, owes considerably more to its North American counterparts than it does Walter’s own European heritage. Orchestral precision is usually sharp, the brass playing tonally shimmering, the strings sonorous but not sumptuous in the Viennese way. If not flawless, this was unquestionably the finest music making I have yet heard in Western Canada, and justifies the Vancouver Symphony’s exalted reputation.

As opening concerts go it could be argued the programming was understated. No single titanic work, just an –arguably- rare overture-concerto-symphony programme. Wagner’s Rienzi overture opened and immediately Mr Tovey established a sense of nobility to the playing that was to be a hallmark of this concert. Mendelssohn’s E minor concerto followed with Sarah Chang as the soloist. There is no denying the prodigious technique of this violinist, but technique alone cannot rescue a performance, and this performance needed something more than Ms Chang brought to it. Though the sound she produces can be sublime – the assured placing of her fingering, the ability to sustain note-pitch harmonics and the sheer warmth of her tone – there was still something a little icy about her performance. Mendelssohn conceived the concerto as a sunny, almost Dionysian journey, and some of that lightness and sheer exaltation was missing, notably in the first movement, which tended towards matter-of-factness. If the violin danced it did so with a Claudius-like gait (not clumsiness it has to be said) rather than a ballerina’s seamlessness. Happiest in the virtuosic final movement, Ms Chang finally seemed to grasp what had eluded her earlier: joyousness.

After intermission, with the militants on the doorsteps of the Orpheum now dispersed (perhaps Rachmaninov himself would have smiled at the irony), Mr Tovey and the Vancouver Symphony delivered a high-octane performance of Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony. This lumbering giant of a work, epic in proportion and nostalgic in mood, can meander and crack at the seams under a less confident conductor; even though Mr Tovey refrained from including the first movement repeat he was reassuringly taut in his conducting and the overall effect was largely of waking this great giant from sleep.

Eschewing the brooding, dark-hued bleakness of a Previn in this symphony (at least in the last performance I heard that conductor give of this work with the London Symphony Orchestra), Mr Tovey opted instead for the direct Russianness of a Kurt Sanderling. The opulence of Rachmaninov’s scoring was always left intact, but the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra underscored it with playing of leanness rather than self-indulgent bloatedness. Here it was the individual contributions from within the orchestra which stood out: the glorious clarinet solo in the slow movement, a voice elsewhere, given the room to breathe by Mr Tovey, almost like arias within an opera. The close of the symphony was as it should be: majestic, almost defiant. And it rightly crowned an impressive corporate achievement.

 

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