San Francisco Classical Voice

SYMPHONY REVIEW

An Exciting Trip

February 26, 2005

Pierre-Laurent Aimard

By Jerry Kuderna

The first minute of the SF Symphony's all-Bartók concert called to mind the famous Bette Davis line: "Fasten your seatbelts, its going to be a bumpy night." Fortunately, David Zinman is a good driver, and the rare conductor who can get a big sound from an orchestra without it ever sounding forced. The result was a glorious evening, showing what fine balances and careful pacing can achieve in projecting unfamiliar and less-familiar works.

The main work was to be the long-neglected ballet — this was its first performance in San Francisco — The Wooden Prince. The least popular of Bartók's three stage works, it was to be his first real success and paved the way for performances of his opera Bluebeard's Castle, which had lain unperformed for years. It was the neglect of this haunting and beautiful work, now one of the essentials of the Bartók canon, which caused him to divert his energies from composition into the collection and recording of folk songs (which became an important part of his life's work).

The Wooden Prince, like Schumann's neglected choral masterpiece played last week, has remained on the shelf for the usual reasons. It is long and somewhat episodic, and it requires a huge orchestra: two saxophones, two contrabassoons, and extra everything else. Hearing it under Zinman's baton, the hour-long score emerged as a marvel of coherence and, yes, economy. To see a conductor, with a simple gesture, summon a massive wave of sound which then comes down in an instant to a whisper, with an equally small gesture, is more than a lesson. Zinman didn't try to substitute for the absent ballet but let the music speak for itself — and, oddly, this gave it more of an impact than a staged version would have had.

David Zinman

Musically,The Wooden Prince has plenty in common with Bluebeard's Castle, especially in the passages of hopeless desire that take Wagnerian longing into the 20th century. Neither work is really dramatic in the usual sense. They are both modern fairy tales about the psyche faced with alienation and war. The Wooden Prince is the more affirmative work, and this probably accounts for its initial success. In the ballet the gruesomeness is gone and Bartók's unique rhythmic gift seems to have been even further stimulated by the dance. The grotesquerie is also there, but with humorous touches, as would befit a Pinocchio prince.

Played as a concert piece, the music gives you all the story; you don't need to read it. Zinman paced it in such a way that the huge climaxes were terraced and you felt their cumulative impact rather than a simple succession of “big” moments. He also gave the “small” moments their due, especially the outstanding contributions of the solo chairs of the orchestra, notably the English horn solo by Julie Giacobassi and turns by concertmaster Alexander Barantschik and the first clarinet, who, I believe, was David Breeden. Zinman encouraged all the players to sing so that their melodies seem to emerge from the earth, so folklike, but forever Bartók's own.

The 2nd piano concerto opened the program with a truly big bang. It was played with enormous dash and precision by the French phenom Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Here the brass and percussion sections also have leading roles, and they challenge the piano at every turn. Avoiding an exercise in brute force rather than a balance of power can be tricky. In all but a few passages, I was able to hear Aimard, which says a lot for the pianist and the balance. The fiendish cadenza in the first movement gave him a chance to unleash salvoes of double notes and chords that went beyond mere display of technique. You felt the development of the musical structure, with the orchestra daring the pianist to go it alone.

I don't know which I admired more, Aimard's startling pianistic command and total identification with the work or his ability to play it from score and manage the page turns by himself. However you cut it, it was a magnificent performance, due again to the superb balances engendered by Zinman. The dialogue between tympanist David Herbert and the pianist in the second movement was one of the most terrifying I have heard. The presto middle section of that movement was of a laser-like clarity. Warning: do not close your eyes between the 2nd and 3rd movements. The drum stroke after that eerie pause can cause levitation from one's seat and/or temporary cardiac arrest.