After
the concentrated two-week celebration of Ned
Rorem's 80th
birthday organized by the Curtis Institute
of Music in Philadelphia December saw two
additional events. The Philadelphia Chamber
Music Society, which has brilliantly transformed
the city’s chamber-music scene over the past
decades under the leadership of artistic director
Anthony Checchia, offered a performance of
the composer’s Fourth String Quartet, and
the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the world
premiere of his Flute Concerto.
The
quartet is a characteristically fluent and
fascinating Rorem piece. The concerto, first
in a series of commissions the Philadelphia
Orchestra has instituted for its principal
players, is something perhaps more unusual.
It is titled "concerto," Rorem acknowledges,
more for "sheer practicality" than
for any association with the traditions of
the concerto as a form; he originally thought
of calling it Odyssey. Laid out in
six movements (The Stone Tower, Leaving–Traveling–Hoping,
Sirens, Hymn, False Waltz, and Résumé
and Prayer), this is not so much a concerto
as a surpassingly imaginative fantasy for
flute and orchestra, the movement headings
referring not to programmatic or narrative
specific but rather to expressive atmosphere
and the changing course of the musical argument.
What
makes the work compel the listener’s attention
is the extraordinarily inventive range and
variety of textures and colors Rorem draws
from his solo instrument and from the large
orchestra he uses. As always, the music sounds
like nobody else’s, and it achieves this end
without any obscurantist technical abradadabra,
speaking a fundamentally tonal language that
combines originality with the appearance of
inevitability. At a little over 30 minutes
in duration, Rorem’s Flute Concerto could
well prove to be a major addition to a genre
somewhat lacking in works of real substance.
Jeffrey Khaner shaped the solo part with masterly
fluency and quicksilver tone. The orchestra
also demonstrated something of its fabled
sumptuousness, but guest conductor Roberto
Abbado managed, both in the concerto and in
the performance of Debussy’s Martyrdom
of Saint Sebastian symphonic fragments
that preceded it, to make practically every
movement and tempo, no matter how cleverly
contrasted by the composers, sound the same.
It is to be hoped that the piece will be heard
again soon, with a more resourceful conductor
on the podium.
Bernard Jacobson
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