Review: Getting It Together

Saturday night's performance by the Houston Symphony, with conductor Alexander Shelley and violin soloist Hilary Hahn, had moments of exceptional individual and section playing. It had moments where the mind of the composer were clear to the listener.

For example, solo flutist Aralee Dorough was a fully equal partner with Hilary Hahn in the melodies that they share at the begining of Prokofiev's first violin concerto. Ms. Dorough alone had the theme at the recapitulation in the first movement and again matched a wonderful soloist. Their communication and music making was first rate.

Moments like those make a night at the Symphony something worth doing. But beautfully played moments do not make a complete concert or a fully satisfying performance. After the jump, one person's view on the potential source of the discontent.

Highlights

As I said, there were moments of great playing during the Saturday night performance. In addition to some wonderful flute playing, the woodwind choir was beautifully solid, the horn sound in the Elgar was sonorous and unpressed, and brass section playing was very fine and taut.

Hilary Hahn was also spot on to the extent she was not having to battle the accompinament.

For me, Prokofiev often has moments that evoke "the rise of the machines"--a mechanized, Soviet dystopia. The second movement of the concerto contained these strains and Hahn gave them the dystopian vision I think Prokofiev intended. Where Prokofiev wanted sweetness or beauty or light, especially in the outer movements, she shown. But where he wanted to invoke the terror of the apparatchnik, she was unconstrained by any need to be "pretty" for pretty's sake.

The concerto ends quietly, so I am gratified that Houston audiences have a habit of pursuing the encore performance. Hahn playing Bach is worth the price of a concert ticket all by itself. And her Bach performance is how one knows Hilary Hahn is the real deal.

You can't fake Bach.

But several things kept the whole concert from "coming together." I think those things included the choice of repertoire, balance issues, and alas, conducting.

Repertoire

The Britten Sea Interludes and Prokofiev's first violin concerto both hold deservedly high places among 20th Century compositions. I love them both.

But neither are performed that often, and so it is likely that a relatively high percentage of the orchestra don't have much experience with these pieces. Putting one on the first half with a more familiar piece requiring less rehearsal would have been the safer bet. Putting them both on the first half, where concerts are usually under-rehearsed, was a risk. And it showed.

The Britten takes an audience from silence (albeit coughing silence) with an ethereal evocation of the sea. The first sounds in the strings are supposed to be atmospheric and etheral--but together. This requires quite a bit of confidence, but my sense was that confidence was lacking. The entrances were too abrupt and lines did not move together. Indeed, there were entrances in the strings that should not have happened at all because they were early.

And why play Sospiri after the intermission at all? The short piece was just another invitation for an interruption and resetting the stage, which in itself disrupts the continuity of the concert.

Balance

It's no secret that Jones Hall is the place that a beautiful sound goes to die. But at the very least one's own colleagues ought not be listed as a cause of death. In the first half of the concert, the stage was truly swallowing the woodwind sound (especially the first row) as well as the horns. The string choir must pay attention to this reality when their own material is secondary. When it is secondary, they must be more transparent.

In the second of Britten's Four Sea Interludes, for example, there are extended passages where the strings are sustained and secondary, and the real action was Aralee Dorough evoking wind or wave with virtuousic flute passages. Those were excellently played but largely obscured by her inattentive colleagues.

Conducting

During the Prokofiev, I was wondering whether Hilary Hahn was having issues with the ensemble playing. It was very subtle, but she moved like a standing concert master during some of the rhythmical passages or changes of tempi. Was she doing this because the orchestra needed another visual cue? I wondered. 

It's hard to tell sitting on the other side of the footlights, but the overall sense that I got is that the orchestra did not sense confident and fully formed musical ideas in which they could trust. This resulted in a performance that was too self-contained and risk averse--kind of like playing the prevent defense for four quarters. This was most apparent to me in the Enigma Variations.

For example, there are lots of ways to play the original theme--but you have to pick one and then go with it. 

Mr. Shelley did not. He gave an upbeat as if the theme was going to be laid down relatively metrically before the later variations. A fine choice. But by the first violin's second note they had dropped tempo, and then Mr. Shelley got slower still. Rubato was generally in an illogical place and inner voices or handoffs among the strings were lost.

Another example: At reherasal 23 (Var. VII Troyte) one wants the tympanist go a little nuts. After all, Elgar has marked a crescendo from piano to accented fortissimo within four bars. The winds and then the rest of the orchestra follow suit when they get the gestures later in that same variation. But this performance was very much "stiff upper lip" boxed up playing. There was no room for exaggeration.

That is what happens when one does not trust. It takes trust to lay it all out there.  

A final example: At rehearsal number 33 (Var. IX Nimrod) the orchestra is treated with some of the most painfully beautiful and whistful music ever written. Each moment can be treasured. Sometimes the inner voices in the seconds and violas are supposed to sustain the musical phrase while the first violins descend.

But here the tempo was pedestrian. Perhaps it was for the best because there did not seem to be anything interesting to communicate had the tempo gone slower.

The variation itself largely devolved into mere melody and accompaniment, but that is not what Elgar wrote. Within three bars, Elgar marked crescendi and dimmenuendi for the inner voices which rise when the first violins are falling. In only five bars, the dynamic marking in the violas is supposed to go from triple pianissimo to mezzo forte, and then it decreases to nothing three bars after that.

You just can't do that if you're in a hurry.

To the orchestra's credit, they started arriving late at some of the cadences when Mr. Shelley refused to give them time, and the brass made a nice climax at the end of the variation.  

But it's not supposed to be that hard.

You can cover a multitude of sins if you have confidence in the podium. Some of the best and most joyful playing I ever did was on a minimally rehearsed concert with Neeme Jarvi, simply because he was so good. He could come up with an idea on the spot and communicate it to us, and we could improvise in complete security. 

Playing on stage is a bit of a high wire act. You can walk the high wire in complete security. but you have to be able to trust that guy with the stick is going to catch you.