SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Smetana, Stock, and Rachmaninoff: James DePreist, cond., Joshua Roman, cello, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 30.5.2009 (BJ)


The centerpiece of this program constituted something of a reunion: Joshua Roman, who was the Seattle Symphony’s principal cellist for two seasons before leaving last year to concentrate on his solo career, came back to offer the world premiere of the Cello Concerto by David Stock, who himself spent a season as the orchestra’s composer in residence ten years ago. The quality of the music and the quality of the performance combined to ensure that a good time was had by all.

Stock is a hard composer, style-wise, to characterize, which is a compliment, since only second-raters fit neatly into familiar pigeonholes. Born almost exactly 70 years ago in Pittsburgh, he has something of a reputation as a populist. But his evident concern to communicate with his audience is backed up by a strength of technique and a mental toughness that keep handily at bay any suspicion that he takes the business of composing too lightly. His Cello Concerto is certainly no pushover. This is a deeply considered work, filling a roughly half-hour frame with two slow movements of intense expressive commitment and a central quasi-scherzo that provides variety without lowering the emotional temperature too much. There are one or two moments in the piece where it might be possible to feel that the harmonic pulse has fallen into abeyance–but given Stock’s undoubted ability to keep his music moving, I think it fair to assume that at these points a degree of stasis is exactly what he was aiming for; and one should never criticize music for failing to be what it was never intended to be.

Largely tonal in its harmonic language, the concerto explores a wide range of rhetorical modes before enlisting, in the last of its three continuous movements, the tradition of Jewish synagogue music to reach an affectingly consolatory conclusion. It is a piece that I certainly look forward to hearing again, though I doubt whether any subsequent hearing could eclipse this premiere for sheer dazzle and emotional heft. The work was written as long as eight years ago, but the scheduled Pittsburgh premiere was canceled when the originally announced soloist fell ill, and Seattle reaped the belated benefit with this incandescent performance by local favorite Roman.

Unusually among modern concertos, this one actually takes the trouble to devise a stimulating solo-tutti relationship: rather than introduce the solo cello at once, Stock prefaces its first entry with some atmospheric scene-setting by the orchestra. The soloist is thus required to establish his leadership instead of taking it for granted, and I do not think anyone could have risen to that challenge more convincingly than Roman, whose lustrous tone never failed to sing, and who realized the long cadenza that links the last two movements with formidable virtuosity. He and Stock were the joint recipients of a clearly enthusiastic ovation, and the cellist rewarded his listeners with a quicksilver performance of the prelude from Bach’s Suite No. 1 in G major.

Under James DePreist’s direction, the orchestra supported Roman with obvious enthusiasm. There was some exciting playing to be heard also in Smetana’s Bartered Bride overture at the start of the concert and in Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances at its end. I felt that orchestral balances could have used a little more care and finesse, especially in the Smetana, where the piccolo, though brilliantly played by Zartouhi Dombourian-Eby, was allowed to dominate the texture rather too raucously. Still, the general effect was exhilarating, and there were some polished solo contributions through the evening, especially by principal flute Scott Goff, and, in the Rachmaninoff, by guest saxophonist Michael Brockman.

Bernard Jacobson 

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