SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Liszt, Tchaikovsky, and Saint-Saëns: Jun Märkl, cond., Horacio Gutiérrez, piano, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 27.3.2008 (BJ)


This was a no-holds-barred romantic program, and under Munich-born Jun Märkl the three works included in it received suitably brilliant and expressive performances from a Seattle Symphony that sounded in fine fettle. With Horacio Gutiérrez as the powerful yet subtle and warmly expressive soloist, Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto was the highlight of the occasion, and here Märkl was at his best, molding phrases with an uncommonly eloquent left hand while he wielded his baton at once clearly and gracefully.

In Liszt’s Prometheus, which opened the program, the grace was not so evident: here the beat itself was crisp enough, but it was almost completely devoid of the kind of preparation that helps an orchestra to read the rhythm accurately. Since the performance was nevertheless fully convincing, it might be said that my technical criticism is neither here nor there, and the Tchaikovsky showed that Märkl can indeed provide that assistance. Yet it was interesting to observe that at the only later point in the program where the conductor reverted momentarily to his jerkier right-hand movements–the scherzo of Saint-Saëns’s Third Symphony–the articulation of the theme suffered, in that the four little repeated notes that constitute the upbeat were not always clearly distinguishable to the ear.

That was, however, a small flaw. For the most part, Märkl gave the work, known informally as the “Organ Symphony,” a compelling and often trenchantly perceptive reading, and Susan Carroll shaped the unusually rewarding third horn solos beautifully. The organ’s contribution to the work is curiously unbalanced, since for fully five sixths of its roughly 35-minute duration the instrument is mostly confined to more or less subterranean rumblings. Joseph Adam did all that could be expected with them, and came into his own for the bigger effects of the closing section, playing with considerable flair and brio. Still, hearing the work again for the first time in several years, I have to say that as a whole it can surely be a rewarding experience only for dedicated organ-fanciers. There are striking inspirations along the way, especially in the rather searching string writing of the slow movement, but the moment the organ part blossoms forth in full glory, inspiration conversely fades, and the last few minutes of the symphony are stupefying in their banality. I went home, therefore, with Gutiérrez’s grand and rich Tchaikovsky performance quite erasing the Saint-Saëns from my memories of the evening.

Bernard Jacobson

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