San Francisco Classical Voice

Witold Lutoslawski's dynamic Concerto for Orchestra (1950), the work that put him into the international spotlight is still fresh and exciting. Kent Nagano led a rousing performance of it at the Berkeley Symphony's opening concert of the season in UC's Zellerbach Hall Wednesday night. In the same program, on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, Bay Area cellist Laszlo Varga displayed his artistry in performances of music by Bach and Richard Strauss,

Lutoslawski spent four years composing his Concerto, begun in response to a commission from the Warsaw Philharmonic in 1950. Similar in extroverted manner to Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra of 1943 (though darker and more intense), it contains vivid contrasts of tempo, dynamics, and texture. In a series of movements with ABA structures, Lutoslawski uses melodies and rhythms derived from folk music, developing them and linking them in dramatic passages of great complexity and power.

Modernist tendencies from the fifties are present here in the clotted sonorities, the expanded role of percussion, and in the way texture is used. to shape musical transitions. For example, the slow Arioso movement closes with a subdued percussion passage, and the following Passacaglia begins with softly plucked basses, sounding like a distorted echo of the timpani we have just heard. Sometimes climaxes suddenly dissolve, leaving behind one or two instruments to form a new episode. There is masterful writing throughout this work, and the performers were fully able to convey its impact.

The concert opened with Laszlo Varga playing Bach's solo Cello Suite No. 4, in major. His performance was spacious and elegant, the line always smooth and graceful supported by a generous, limpid tone. Had he stressed the dance rhythms more than he did, in the Bourrée and especially in the Gigue, Varga would have lent his interpretation greater immediacy and variety. His predominating lyricism was nonetheless satisfying.

Strauss' Don Quixote proved to be a difficult challenge for the orchestra. This tone poem from the turn of the century is written in an exaggerated late romantic style, with elaborate soloistic textures shifting in and out of the orchestral fabric. The cello personifies Quixote himself. Varga's playing however was not sufficiently impassioned or mercurial to capture the variety of moods which define the character and keep the dramatic pace moving. For its part, the orchestra behaved well and capably, but was not really up to the sophistication and intricacy of Strauss' score. Violist Evan Wilson, whose instrument represents Quixote's servant, Sancho Panza, brought out the carping, four-square earthiness of Strauss' characterization to good effect.

(Jules Langert is a composer and teacher who resides in the East Bay.)

©1999 Jules Langert, all rights reserved