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SYMPHONY REVIEW
February 6, 2005
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By Alexander Kahn
“On or about April 1910 human nature changed,” wrote Virginia Woolf in 1924. Woolf's famous pronouncement was tested in a concert by the Marin Symphony on Sunday with Alasdair Neale conducting. In juxtaposing Sibelius' grandiose Second Symphony, written in 1902, and Ravel's restrained Le Tombeau de Couperin, (Couperin's tomb), written between 1914 and 1917, Neale and the orchestra demonstrated what a difference a decade can make.
Sibelius' Second is the composer's most frequently performed symphony. It is a lush Romantic work beloved by audiences, largely on account of its triumphant coda, which reiterates a simple yet passionate melody in the strings to a pulsing accompaniment in the winds and brass. The Marin Symphony did justice to this music as Neale demanded — and received — a rich, full-bodied sound. The pastoral opening of the first movement, presenting a series of fragmented and disconnected themes, was also well-served. Neale brought out the contrasts in these materials, setting the audience up for their development and interaction later in the movement.
Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin was originally written as a suite for piano, dedicated to friends of the composer who died during the First World War. It is worlds away from the bombast of Sibelius' second, making use of the harmonic and formal language of François Couperin and Jean-Phillipe Rameau, composers of the French Baroque. In place of the large orchestra required for Sibelius, this piece calls for reduced forces and is about half as long.
The suite is a tour de force of orchestration, calling for delicate harmonics and bowing effects in the strings, and virtuosic wind playing, especially in the oboe. The musicians handled all of these challenges with remarkable aplomb and assurance. Neale's pacing must be especially commended, for he consistently chose tempi that emphasized the connection between these pieces and their origins in Baroque dance forms. These two works sandwiched Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major for Violin and Viola, which seemed somewhat out of place with its chosen partners. The soloists were concertmaster Jeremy Constant and Jenny Douglass, who leads the viola section. On the whole, the performance was a letdown. The Sinfonia Concertante relies, above all else, on playful interaction among all of the performers, lest the piece quickly become tiresome. Though Constant and Douglas handled their roles with technical finesse, there was a lack of communication between them, amplified by their tendency to stare intently at the music on their stands and only rarely look at one another. Interaction between the soloists and the orchestra was also lacking. Although Neale did an excellent job of balancing the various voices, he failed to prevent discrepancies of tempi between soloists and orchestra and between the upper and lower strings.
(Alexander Kahn is a graduate student in music history and literature at UC Berkeley, where he also serves as assistant conductor of the University Symphony.)
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Jeremy Constant
Jenny Douglass