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SYMPHONY REVIEW
An Orchestration Course, In Concert
March 31, 2001
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By Brent Heisinger
In a program entitled "French Fantastique" on Saturday at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, the San Jose Symphony featured music of two great French composers in an uplifting program that offered a contrast in musical styles yet similarity in compositional approach. For all their differences, Hector Berlioz and Maurice Ravel share a deep interest in orchestral color and mastery of it. Essentially, this means that without excellent solo playing from woodwinds and brass, the works of both composers would suffer immeasurably. The San Jose Symphony wind section, however, was up to the task, providing exceptionally fine solos throughout the evening. As a result, the music excelled.
The evening's tour de force, Berlioz' Symphony Fantastique (1830), is an unparalleled, lengthy five-movement work that broke with convention in significant ways. Rather than employ traditional symphonic form, Berlioz used an autobiographical story as a program, subtitled "An Episode in the Life of an Artist." A single melody (idée fixe) represented Harriet Smithson, an Irish Shakespearean actress with whom he had a tumultuous love/hate relationship. Deemed essential reading for the listener, Berlioz' program explained the five movements under the headings "Reveries and Passions," "A Ball," "In the Country," "March of the Scaffold," and "Dream of the Witches' Sabbath."
This musical drama was beautifully shaped by the orchestra, notwithstanding the excessive length of the meandering third movement and a slow tempo for the fourth movement. Berlioz loved contrast, and conductor Leonid Grin and the orchestra made the best of it. Grin's phrasing and adherence to dynamic and tempo changes was indeed tastefully executed. But I was impressed most with the precision, impeccable intonation, and sense of style of the woodwind soloists. The powerful final movement, juxtaposing the Dies Irae (from the Requiem Mass) with the "Witches Dance," challenged the full capacity of the orchestra. The grandiose brass parts versus the special string effects and delicate woodwind passages combined to bring the work to a close and the audience to its feet. Ravel, a born orchestrator, succeeded Berlioz' passion to explore orchestral color and had a command of harmony, counterpoint, and compositional prowess greater than Berlioz'. His Piano Concerto No. 2, in G, laced with jazzlike melodies and harmonies, extremes in rhythmic activity, and imaginative shifts in orchestral sound, realizes his idea that "the music of a concerto . . . should be lighthearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or at dramatic effects." Coming a century after the Symphonie Fantastique and seven years after Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (an obvious precursor), Ravel's adaptation of American jazz features was especially suitable.
Mikhail Rudy, a Russian-born pianist now residing in Paris and London, gave an exquisite performance of the Ravel. The demands are great, from the rapid gymnastics of the first and third movements to the seemingly easy (but deceptively difficult) subtleties of the second movement. The scoring is elaborate and the context unique (for 1930). The performance was delightful in buoyancy and vigor, solo wind playing again superb. Fine trumpet, horn, English horn, harp, and E-flat clarinet solos deserve mention, as does the fine expressive molding of the music by Grin and Rudy. The balance achieved between piano and orchestra brought out relationships of color critical to the work. As encore, Rudy played a solo excerpt from Stravinsky's Petrushka, received with a standing ovation. More Ravel opened the program: Alborada del Gracioso, originally written for piano in 1905 and scored for orchestra by the composer in 1918. This is the Spanish side of Ravel, with the standard castanet rhythms performed on other instruments, and repeated notes suggesting the strumming of a flamenco guitar. The orchestra took care to keep both the flamboyant rhythm and the many textural strands clear, making the most of Ravel's Spanish impression. Though its accompaniment might have been more delicate, the bassoon solo was beautifully performed. Bravo! not only for the delightful performances by everyone, but for the lesson in orchestration provided by two of the very best. (Brent Heisinger is a composer and a conductor and Professor of Music, Emeritus, at San Jose State University.) ©2001 Brent Heisinger, all rights reserved |