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SYMPHONY REVIEW
A Flawed Day for a Vital Orchestra
May 20, 2001
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By Michelle Dulak
Sunday afternoon's Santa Rosa Symphony performance at the Luther Burbank Center illustrated both why the Symphony is one of the most vital musical institutions in the greater Bay Area and where its existing weaknesses lie. On the plus side: consistently interesting programming, intelligent and impassioned conducting, and some fine solo playing. On the minus: uneven section playing, a flawed hall, and a persistent schedule conflict that took several of the leading string members out of this set.
The concert opened with Haydn's late, underperformed Sinfonia Concertante for violin, cello, oboe, and bassoon soloists with orchestra, which gave conductor Jeffrey Kahane an opportunity to show off four of his orchestra's principals at once. Joseph Edelberg, the concertmaster, got the largest share of the notes, and dispatched them with the unforced elegance he always brings to late 18th century music. I wish he had had more of the diva in him, especially in the mock-recitative that opens the finale, where his gentle delivery seemed to miss the joke (though he did throw off a brilliant and seemingly improvised cadential flourish later in the same movement).
Karla Ekholm, on the bassoon solo, got her jokes all right (I loved the swagger she put into the flourish of arpeggios coming out of the first-movement cadenza, where all the other players are sitting patiently on trills waiting for her to finish) and played with a lovely, mellow tone that still had a bit of bite. Barbara Midney was the oboist, a little less attractive of timbre but secure in all her passagework.
The real puzzle was Wanda Warkentin's disappointing account of the cello solo. That some of this taxing part should be badly out of tune might just be bad luck or an off-day. But even the high passages that were in tune sounded strenuous and ill at ease. Her playing made a strange counterpart to Edelberg's easy grace. The reduced orchestra played stylishly but with enough failures of ensemble to sound slightly underrehearsed. Chords that ought to have been hit squarely had instead that accordion-like internal swell that means some strings are playing just a little before the others. And the dynamics seemed too genteel for Haydn, even such relatively carefree Haydn as this. A harmonic shock like the sudden (and fortissimo) move to G-flat toward the end of the finale ought to feel like being knocked over the head. Mahler's Fifth Symphony, which followed the intermission, was a different and grander sort of challenge. Kahane certainly seems ideally equipped for Mahler. His conducting technique combines expressive sweep and incisive beat in a manner depressingly rare among conductors. His account of the Mahler was scrupulous and meticulously prepared, from a conductor's point of view. The attention he had given to obeying Mahler's vexingly detailed tempo, dynamic, and character directions was obvious.
While the conducting was passionate as well as precise, the performance that emerged wasn't quite either. There were fine and brave things: A tender and unusually flexible Adagietto and some blazing horn playing from principal Roy Pollock in the Scherzo stand out in my memory. So does the last movement's coda, heedless of danger, careening to its end with a reckless rush that deserved the standing ovation it provoked. But elsewhere the passion seemed too often muted by fear. It's a very difficult score, yes, but that's all the more reason to throw yourself at it with maximum force. The first violins did it, in the horrible high chromatic torrents of the second movement, not only nailing (almost) everything but wailing like demons out of Hell. But the cellos at the opening of the same movement ought to sound as though they are trying to rip all the hair off their bows, and they didn't. They seemed to be leaving themselves just a little margin, playing it just a little safe. Not in Mahler, please. Anywhere else. And as for precision: There's no point in cataloguing flubbed attacks and the like, except to say that there were a lot more of them than I would expect from this orchestra. It might have been mere fatigue; it might have been the hall; it might have been the absence of several key string players. It might also have been sheer underfamiliarity.
The hall is certainly one of the culprits. (A new hall is planned at Sonoma State University, and the orchestra expects to move there within the next few years.) Every player I've talked to who has worked in the Luther Burbank Center hall has told me how difficult it is to hear across the stage, or indeed to hear even sections relatively nearby. That's a recipe for smudged attacks and other miscommunications, especially in a piece with so large an orchestra as this one. And it makes for quiet dynamics that aren't quiet enough, as players strive to play loud enough to be heard by one another. The pianissimo reprises of the Adagietto in the finale of the Mahler came out roughly mezzo piano. Matters weren't helped by spreading the brass out in a huge line from one edge of the back wall to the other. I think this is why this fine band of brass players (they sounded terrific individually) didn't come across anything like a real brass choir when they had to combine in those occasional transcendent moments where Mahler brings out the brass in force. In fairness, though, I don't see where else they could have been put on that constricted stage. The same space problem meant that string sections couldn't be nearly as large as they really should in a piece like this. But the dearth of strings was compounded by the absence of several of the orchestra's key string players, including the principal second violin, the principal viola, the assistant principal cello, and one of the strongest first violinists. Where were they? Well, they were playing a conflicting set with the New Century Chamber Orchestra.
It is difficult for musicians of the caliber of these four to avoid being asked to do conflicting gigs, but when they are crucial members of two different orchestras, each with substantial seasons, the problem is severe. Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the American Bach Soloists (whose memberships overlap much more than do Santa Rosa's and NCCO's) solve the problem simply by scheduling around one another. Do Santa Rosa and NCCO do the same? According to an NCCO spokesperson I contacted, every effort is made to avoid such conflicts. But still they arise (next year the groups' December sets are likely to overlap). Both ensembles are too important to the Bay Area's musical life for either of them to be compromised in this way. (Michelle Dulak is a violinist and violist who has written about music for Strings, Stagebill, Early Music America, and the New York Times.) ©2001 Michelle Dulak, all rights reserved |
