SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Musorgsky, Adès, and Stravinsky: David Robertson, conductor, Leila Josefowicz, violin, Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 11.6.2009 (BJ)


We have had much dazzling violin-playing to enjoy from the Seattle Symphony’s guest soloists lately, but none perhaps more silkily and sensuously ravishing than Leila Josefowicz offered in this local premiere of the Violin Concerto by the young English composer Thomas Adès.

Achieving such a result was a more remarkable feat than it may have appeared. A listener coming unprepared to the work, 20 minutes long and subtitled “Concentric Paths,” could be forgiven for thinking it relatively easy to play, for the prevailing effect of the solo part is simple and songful, if frequently stratospheric in pitch–yet the notes as written in the score are fearsomely complicated and tortuous of execution.

Complexity is a matter of content; complication is a different and less praiseworthy quality. To my ears, the trouble with the piece is that it rarely establishes any true harmonic pulse. As a result, though the first and last of the three movements are ostensibly rapid in pace, all three are essentially slow music.

By far the most successful passage comes about halfway through the long central slow movement. Here Adès, abandoning for a while the intricate rhythms that have made much of the solo music a trial for any soloist, allows the violin to sing its heart out in a sequence of sustained, easefully diatonic phrases. Josefowicz played them with compelling authority, supported by beautifully hushed contributions from Christopher Olka’s tuba and several other brass and woodwind instruments. (Anthony Marwood, by the way, the work’s original soloist, has recorded an equally impressive performance that can be downloaded from the EMI Classics web site.)

If I say little about the participation of guest conductor David Robertson, it is because neither in the Adès, nor in Musorgsky’s Night on the Bare Mountain and Stravinsky’s complete Firebird ballet, which opened and closed the program, is there much scope for a conductor to exercise searching musical thought. His role is rather that of the traffic-cop — the best thing he can do is not get in the way of good orchestral players. That negative responsibility Robertson fulfilled with some skill, and he was rewarded with superb work from his players.

The Musorgsky is a rather silly piece–Berlioz did this sort of diabolism much better–but it was rousingly played. As for Firebird, Stravinsky knew what he was doing when he extracted a suite from it, for the complete score contains long stretches where the listener, waiting patiently for something of musical significance to happen, is rewarded merely with yet another bit of snazzy orchestration. (Never averse to biting the hand that fed him, Stravinsky lumped his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov into the category of composers whose orchestration is the main thing we notice–but Rimsky is certainly the influence feeding him artistically in this piece.) The only weak moment in the performance came with King Kashchei’s Infernal Dance, which got off to a rather unstable start and never really settled into a firmly propulsive rhythm. The rest, enhanced by many graceful solos and much glistening tone from the strings, was appropriately magical.

Bernard Jacobson

NB: This review appeared also in the Seattle Times.

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