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SYMPHONY REVIEW
Defying Expectations In Oakland
January 26, 2001
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By Jeff Rosenfeld
Michael Morgan unexpectedly stepped onto the Paramount Theater stage before the Oakland East Bay Symphony concert on Friday. The orchestra's music director wasn't scheduled to conduct this time. Instead, Maestro Morgan warmly introduced guest conductor Stanley Sperber and announced that a planned world premiere had been postponed, replaced by Frederic Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1.
The audience responded to the surprise substitution with oohs and ahs and applause. Morgan took the spontaneous eruption of approval in good humor, but seemed genuinely perplexed. I can't blame him. Perhaps OEBS stalwarts had been unnerved by the prospect of unknowns — guest conductor and soloist as well as new music. They should have been more unnerved by the prospect of too much familiarity.
The Chopin concerto turned out to be the least distinguished performance of the evening, audience expectations aside. The orchestra accompanied ably under Sperber, who is conductor laureate of the Haifa Symphony Orchestra. But the Chopin is a pianist's piece. Soloist Evelyn Chen undoubtedly proved her mastery merely by performing it on short notice, after having prepared the intended premiere (a concerto by Kenneth Lampl).
She was technically accomplished and undeniably sensitive, but I heard no shape to the long phrases Chopin spins out of his simple ideas, no special variety of tonal color, no shades of dynamics, no spirited rubato. It's possible that the acoustic of the theater drained all this out of Chen's playing before the sound ever got to my seat in the balcony. The piano was placed over the organ pit, where it may simply have been too far forward to benefit from the paneled shell over the stage. I suspect, however, that the performance was simply proof that Chopin's ingratiating melodies usually please audiences regardless of how perfunctory the performance might be. On the other hand, Sperber's rendition of the concluding warhorse, the Symphony No. 2 of Johannes Brahms, almost saved the evening, simply because it defied expectation. The orchestra is slightly smaller than its across-the-bay counterpart, and we might presume that lush Brahms would suffer from a limited string section. Not so. Size plays in favor of the OEBS in this repertory. The Brahms was muscular, thanks to the orchestra's full-throated lower strings. But it also had a clarity in the first violins and a prominence of the woodwinds that was bracing and pleasing. Sperber wasn't in a hurry, but his gestures instilled a tension that kept the orchestra moving with purpose. The final blaze of glory from the trombones and horns (splendid throughout) was both swift and thrilling. Ironically, the piece on the program that could engender the fewest expectations was the most ingratiating. That was the unfamiliar opener, A Child's World, by Sperber's compatriot, Aharon Harlap. Harlap originally wrote the suite for flute and piano, but I could not detect those origins in the beautifully orchestrated version (from 1986) that OEBS played on Friday. Harlap gives prominent roles to the oboe, celeste, and bassoons, among other instruments (only low brass are excluded).
In all, the suite is a slim collection lasting about eight minutes. And the movements are so tightly related, melodically, that I can imagine it as a set of variations with theme implied. Each movement represents a short episode from childhood: "Little March," "Hurdy-Gurdy," "A Bad Dream," "Naughty Boy," "See-Saw," and "Lullaby." Harlap delivers on his promises here, perhaps too predictably. The march marches, the hurdy-gurdy wheezes, the dream interrupts peace with raucous effusion, the see-saw rocks, the lullaby resolves sweetly. The themes take inspiration from the Romantic moods of Aram Khatchaturian, and maintain an air of innocence. Harlap looks for none of the wry sophistication that Robert Schumann or Maurice Ravel found in themes of childhood. Sperber and the orchestra made a convincing case for the gentle and colorful fun in the piece. You might think A Child's World could find a place on programs aimed at young listeners. I'm not so sure. Children, like adult listeners, love to hear their expectations defied. As the sole representative of the "new" on a program of familiar music, Harlap's work was pleasant but unfortunately defied only one expectation I had for it. It lacked surprises. (Jeff Rosenfeld is an oboist with the Kensington Symphony, West County Winds, and Pacific Wind Ensemble. He is a freelance science journalist and author of the recent book, Eye of the Storm: Inside the World's Deadliest Hurricanes, Tornadoes, and Blizzards.) ©2001 Jeff Rosenfeld, all rights reserved |
