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SYMPHONY REVIEW
Surprise? Striking New,
September 23, 2001
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By Heuwell Tircuit
During the great conductor hunt by major East Coast orchestras, the New York Times published articles, almost daily, speculating on the possibilities for its city's Philharmonic. Curiously, two names were consistently absent from their ruminations: Claudio Abbado and Kent Nagano. In one such article, however, Nagano confirmed that he had not even been contacted — by the Philharmonic or any of the other major American orchestra. That was none too surprising. Nagano is too intellectual and far too adventurous for Top-40 dozers, too American in outlook.
This season's opening concerts of the Berkeley Symphony last Monday, repeated yesterday in Berkeley's Hertz Hall, was typical of Nagano's programing standards. Even the established composers were represented by unhackneyed music: Beethoven's Coriolan Overture, Op. 62 and Schubert's Symphony No. 6 in C Major, D. 589. Between those, Nagano lead the West Coast premiere of Richard Felciano's Camp Songs for chamber orchestra , a work commissioned and premiered in Pittsburgh. Following intermission, the orchestra offered the premiere of Regis Campo's enchanting Lumen ("Light") and then pianist Jerry Kuderna joined the orchestra for the premiere of Daniel Brewbaker's jejune Piano Concerto No. 2, To Kolon. All three composers attended yesterday's concert.
Felciano's 12-minute elegy lamented the fate of Japanese-Americans during the 1940s, when thousands were moved into detention camps. It was a lovely, strongly made piece, typically brimming with glittering timbres, scored for quintets of winds and string, three brasses and two percussionists. While the basic architecture took account of classical notions, none sunk into the merely ordinary. A particularly effective coda, for instance, opened with a brief recitative for solo trombone, followed by a soft snippet of quasi-chorale for the brass instruments.
Along the way, Felciano incorporated subtle references to antique Japanese sonorities. Here and there, a whiff of Gagaku or a hint of Noh music turned up. But those were so brief and so skillfully maneuvered into the general texture that I doubt many would even have noticed their inclusion.
Tthe event of the evening proved to be Campo's terse, endlessly entertaining Lumen. Still in his early 30s, Campo was born in Marseilles, and has already risen to the front rank of young European composers, heaped with awards and deserved honors in Holland, Germany and in his native land, France. Campo has come up with something new in music. He creates an instantly communicative style of music which is utterly disestablishmentarian. In the program notes, Campo admits that, "I follow neither the ‘avant garde' tradition of atonality nor the ‘arriere garde' devotion to tonality." (Campo's music belongs more to the former than the latter. ) But one highly unusual aspect of Campo's craft lies in his sense of humor, and his willingness to play around with sonic foolishness. That's a great rarity for advanced music. I mean, can one imagine Boulez or Takemitsu having written an openly, genuinely funny scherzo? One ends up hearing music somewhere between Messiaen, Lutoslawski and Offenbach. It's all utterly mad of course, but also completely wonderful. A traditional triad in the low brasses turned up from time to time during Lumen, but always under a blizzard of twittering strings and woodwinds that might make even Messiaen blush. Are such things acts of homage or sarcasm? I can't say, but what I can say is that such passages, and indeed the whole of Campo's terse piece left one yearning for more. Regis Campo! Now there's a name to remember.
Nagano has created an enviable reputation as, in effect, an expatriate conductor in Europe, holding major posts in Lyon, Manchester, London and most recently as music director of Deutsche Symphonie-Orchestra Berlin. Meanwhile, he's been conducting performances for most of Europe's major opera houses and orchestras. (He virtually peeled the paint of La Scala's walls with a memorable Salome back in 1989, during Riccardo Muti's first season as La Scala's director.) A conductor simply does not make such a progress without a firm grip on the classics. Showing an uncanny sensibility for tempo as well as respect for Beethoven and Schubert, Nagano added subtle touches on insight. Coriolan Overture, for instance, has always struck me as Beethoven's most utterly tragic expression — even more so than his Overture to Egmont. Void of triumph, Coriolan untypically has a quite ending that just fades into the ether. Fully aware of all this, Nagano offered an intense performance that still managed to move forward with fierce momentum. But when he reached the final desperate pages, he allowed the music to slow just a little, adding refined touches of rubato which emphasized the expression of the music's pain. It's the kind of thing one used to expect of a Bruno Walter performance, a bit daring but right to the point.
So too with Schubert's Sixth. Nagano captured the charm of the music and its architectural strength, while avoiding the pitfall of letting the music sound lily-livered. It's always struck me as ridiculous that the piece is commonly referred to as "The Little C Major". How can a 35-minute symphony be called "Little"? Yes, the Ninth is larger and also in C Major, but that's hardly excuse enough. The Sixth might better be renamed Schubert's Vienna Symphony, if indeed a nickname were required. It represents a near portrait of that city, what with its Viennese-type of march for a finale. After all, we've stuck six Haydn Symphonies with the name Paris and a dozen more with London because they were premiered there. Similarly, Mozart's symphonies come down to us with a Paris, a Linz and a Prague attached for no better reason. "Little C Major" is just pain silly. It's Big piece! (And anyway, who cares about the key?) Pianist Kuderna played brilliantly during the Brewbaker Concerto, as he can be relied up to do, but the orchestral support was less polished than it had been on all evening. The long work hardly ever gave the pianist a moment's rest and this made for a tiresome sameness of texture, particularly considering the simplicity of the piano writing and the ultra conservative content of the materials. Give Brewbaker this — his Second is better than Leroy Anderson's Piano Concerto. But not by much. One should not dismiss conservative music out of hand. Indeed, I harbor a doubtlessly sinful admiration for the piano concertos of Howard Hanson, Gian Carlo Menotti, John Ireland and Poulenc. But Brewbaker went too far. He did not include a big timpani solo in the finale's coda, but otherwise indulged in just about every cliché in the book.The piece reminded me of nothing so much as the kind of piano music (orchestrally accompanied) British actresses used to fake in 1940s movies about a failed romance with a pilot who'd been killed during the Blitz while heroically attempting to defend London. (Heuwell Tircuit, composer, performer and writer, was chief writer for Gramophone Japan and for 21 years a music reviewer for the SF Chronicle, previously for the Chicago American and Asahi Evening News.) ©2001 Heuwell Tircuit, all rights reserved |
