SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Mozart, C.P.E. Bach, and Beethoven: Gerard Schwarz, cond., Scott Goff, flute, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 28.2.2008 (BJ)


A program of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven looks like promising the most traditional assemblage of acknowledged masterpieces by acknowledged masters. Such, indeed, are Mozart’s “Prague” Symphony and Beethoven’s Fourth. But the Bach on this particular evening was a different Bach. I am tempted to put it more truculently, and say “the wrong Bach.”

Give me a piece by J.C. Bach–a real piece by J.C. Bach, not the travesty by the egregious Henri Casadesus that was foisted on us under Christian Bach’s name earlier this season–and I am happy. Give me C.P.E. instead, and I cannot help remembering the poisonous but accurate observation of the musicologist Basil Lam describing Emanuel Bach’s paradoxes as “the too-easy surprises of a style where anything may happen.” The Flute Concerto in D minor, H. 425, that represented J.S. Bach’s most famous son on this occasion is, as it happens, relatively unparadoxical, but the musical invention it presents is not so striking in conception or treatment as to persuade me that this is a great composer rather than one of Donald Tovey’s I.H.F.s–“Interesting Historical Figures”–nor is there anything in it to rival his brother Christian’s sunny charm and lively yet poised expression. Still and all, there are not that many good concertos for a player of the instrument to choose from, and the opportunity to hear the Seattle Symphony’s principal flutist, Scott Goff, playing with consummate stylistic authority and with his familiar pellucid tone, unblemished by the sort of admixture of air that afflicts some lesser performers’ sound-production, was welcome.

Under music director Gerard Schwarz’s leadership, the orchestra provided well-organized and eloquent support, and indeed the ensemble playing throughout the evening was of the highest caliber. The “Prague” Symphony received a performance characteristic of the conductor’s unforced brilliance in Mozart, with whose music he had a long and intense association in his years heading the “Mostly Mozart” festival at New York’s Lincoln Center. The outer movements were brilliant without harshness, and the Andante flowed beautifully. My only complaint is in respect of a certain parsimoniousness with repeats–the omission of the exposition repeat in the Andante was particularly damaging, since without it the sudden key-change at the start of the development is shorn of much of its effect.

Beethoven is not the first composer I think of when I add up Schwarz’s strengths in my mind. Unsurpassed today as an interpreter of Shostakovich and Mahler, the maestro does not always rise to the level of revelatory insight when he tackles Beethoven. But the Fourth Symphony he gave us was perhaps the finest interpretation of the composer’s music I have ever heard from him, and indeed one of the freshest, most spontaneous-sounding, and most dramatically gripping performance of the work itself that I can recall. The beginning did not promise well, because the semitone shift that gives the bassoon part in the slow introduction such arresting power was not compellingly emphasized. After that, however, all went splendidly. The main first movement was full of power, and flexible when it needed to be. The Adagio was never allowed to languish unduly, and a guest timpanist rejoicing in the name Matthew Drumm played his little solo with admirable delicacy. I don’t think I have ever heard the horn section’s concluding phrase in the scherzo so effectively done–usually the sonic overhang from the preceding tutti chord obscures the first two or three notes. And in the finale principal bassoonist Seth Krimsky showed himself completely unfazed by one of Beethoven’s cruellest tests of his instrument, even at the cracking pace Schwarz set for the movement. A delightful ending, then, to an evening of civilized and vividly realized music.

Bernard Jacobson


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