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Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, and Strauss: Gerard Schwarz, cond., James Ehnes, violin, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 15.3.2008 (BJ)


A soloist of top quality can make a relatively minor work sound major. As it happens, the last time I had heard the Glazunov Violin Concerto live it was played by a rising soloist of equally remarkable talent, Julia Fischer, and this time around the young American virtuoso James Ehnes had a no less salutary effect on a piece that has some mildly agreeable melodic writing and not much else going for it. A couple of years ago, Ehnes was the violinist in one of the two finest performances of Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata I have ever heard. Glazunov offered him no comparable challenge in terms of musical insight or intellectual grasp, but perhaps for that very reason the remarkable richness and glow of the sound he draws from his Strad came even more stunningly to the foreground. This is surely going to be one of the outstanding performers of the next few decades.

Next to the Glazunov, even one of Strauss’ relatively minor tone-poems makes the impact of a true masterpiece. The Symphonia Domestica on this occasion likewise enjoyed outstanding advocacy, and in this case it was the contrast with my most recent experience of it in the concert hall, rather than any similarity, that was striking. Wolfgang Sawallisch has a formidable reputation as an interpreter of the composer’s music, yet it has always seemed to me that there is a certain lack of repose, or you might say of sheer amplitude, in his Strauss performances. Such was the case when he conducted it in Philadelphia a few years ago. No such criticism could be directed at Gerard Schwarz’s performance with the Seattle Symphony, which, while it never dawdled unduly, also never failed to give the big moments time to make their effect. Especially notable was the allure of the playing he secured, with eloquent solos from concertmaster Maria Larionoff and many of her colleagues in all sections of the orchestra, warm sound from the massed strings, and expertly balanced textures in which such passages as those that highlight the horn section always fitted perfectly into the overall sound-picture.

It wasn’t a night for “great music”; the Rimsky-Korsakov Capriccio espagnole that opened the program in a pleasantly rumbustious rendering can’t be called anything more than a colorful travelogue of a piece. But then, if  Symphonia Domestica has its moments of questionable taste, even at his least consistently lofty in inspiration Strauss towers over practically all his 20th-century colleagues. Writing in 1962, Glenn Gould described him as “quite simply . . . the greatest musical figure who has lived in this century.” Whatever other impressive claimants might be dug up for that title, I agree with Gould. The man had music in his very bones, and it was a joy to renew acquaintance with his chronicle of life with Pauline (and baby Franz!) in so splendid a realization.

Bernard Jacobson

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