SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Bruch and Bruckner: Gerard Schwarz, cond., Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, violin, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 3.4.2008 (BJ)


To hear Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg play Bruch’s First Violin Concerto was like emerging into bright, refreshing daylight after the murky night of Anne-Sophie Mutter’s recital just 24 hours earlier. Slipshod in technique and pusillanimous in expressive reach, Ms. Mutter’s performance had succeeded in the unlikely feat of making Brahms’s three violin sonatas sound like unconsidered and indeed inconsiderable trifles, and not even the collaboration of Lambert Orkis provided much mitigation, that splendid pianist and musician’s far too deferential playing on this occasion suggesting that his performing partnership with the violinist has gone on altogether too long.

“Pusillanimous” is just about the last word you could ever apply to Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. She plays with a passion as unbridled as her technique is solid–what a pleasure it was to hear so rich and singing a violin sound and such brilliantly clear articulation after the soapy superficiality of tone and lackadaisical phrasing of the previous evening!–and she is forever taking interpretative risks in order to realize the full scope of her commitment to the music in hand. Risks, of course, can go awry. Occasionally hers do just that, but most of the time the results are utterly spellbinding, and her performance of the Bruch was exemplary in its stylistic conviction, tonal splendor, and expressive warmth. There were moments, too, when the imaginative give-and-take between the soloist and the Seattle Symphony under Gerard Schwarz’s sympathetic direction raised delighted smiles all round.

Where Mutter’s approach had diminished Brahms, Salerno-Sonnenberg magnified Bruch. As fine a piece as it is, this G-minor Concerto may not be a front-rank masterpiece on the level of, say, the Beethoven, Brahms, or Elgar violin concertos, but the performance made it sound that way. The work provided, therefore, an ideal program-mate for Bruckner’s endlessly inventive Fifth Symphony. “Endlessly” is, perhaps, a double-edged term in the context–there are points in the finale at which, hearing the work for the first time in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw some 47 years ago, I found myself thinking, “Bruckner’s shot his bolt–he can’t possibly cap that last climax.” Yet he does indeed cap it, and then starts again to build yet another climax, and caps that one too. The consequence is an architectural marvel, and the adjective is crucial: I take issue with the program note’s assertion that Bruckner’s music possesses a “drama equaled by few musical works.” Surely it is architectural grandeur, rather than the kind of symphonic drama we associate with composers like Beethoven and Brahms, that most distinctly characterizes the Bruckner symphonies. They are essentially static constructions, not dramas but cathedrals. And this Fifth Symphony is a case very much in point, for the listener enters it through a slow introduction whose grandiose central statement functions like the arched portals of the cathedrals that were Bruckner the organist’s second home.

In addition to Schwarz’s unerring pacing of the music, the factor in his interpretation that made the composer’s architectural achievement triumphantly clear was the breadth of its dynamic range. The climaxes had every bit of the requisite amplitude, assisted by contributions from the brass choir that were wonderfully smooth and sonorous. But climaxes make their effect best if there are true pianissimos to throw them in relief, and the soft pizzicato string passages that are an unusual feature of this symphony were brought off with breathtaking delicacy (damaged only by salvos of uncontrolled coughing from several thoughtless persons in the audience).

In their more high-flying moments, too, the strings sounded beautiful. Michael Crusoe’s finely focused timpani playing was another strength of the performance, as were eloquent solos from the woodwind section, notably principal flute Scott Goff, who had nailed his Brucknerian colors to the mast with an enthusiastic and scholarly pre-concert lecture. A thoroughly satisfying evening of romantic music, then, done with just the flair and afflatus that the romantics demand.

Bernard Jacobson

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