Review: Heras-Casado, Beethoven and Petrushka

Music has a pulse.

This is not to say that it ticks along at the same tempo and never alters. A healthy pulse changes tempo moment to moment with the tempo of life.

When I stand up from this keyboard, my heart rate will rise. And every part of my heartbeat, all the little subdivisions, will rise together and in harmony. When I exercise today, it will rise some more.

But a heartbeat with arhytmia will not do that properly or naturally.

Saturday night's performance by the Houston Symphony with Pablo Heras-Casado and Jon Kimura-Parker showed the difference between pulse (with and without rubato) and arhythmia. When the orchestra or the soloist laid down the pulse it worked. When they did not, it didn't.

Aftere the jump, one person's take.

Robert Schumann's Overture to Manfred can be an exciting way to begin a concert. Just listen to this performance by the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell.

Manfred is German romanticism writ large. Like Robert Schumann himself, the music is full of manic swells and sweeping contrasts.The melodic material is often syncopated and moves on the off-beats. And Schumann does not give you any help either. His opaque and dense orchestrations do not make the music happen. You have to punch it through.

Overture to Manfred starts with three notes shot out of a gun.They are marked forte then get immediately louder--each note on the upbeats rather than the downbeats. Then there is silence, followed by immediate quiet.



Opening to Manfred Overture

   I looked through the whole score and did not see a "mezzo" dynamic anywhere. Instead, this was typical. Notice the "cresc. molto" from piano to fortissimo in four bars with chords on the weak beats over agitato ostinato. The music is supposed to be unsettling:

But Saturday night, almost the entire performance was mezzo nothing--neither truly soft nor truly powerful (a true forte only being reached in the brass near the end of the piece). The orchestra played defensively, for self-preservation. I suspected arhythmia traceable to the podium.

For example, the first three notes dribbled from a hose rather than being shot from a gun. This is what you do if you're uncertain when and how to play.

And upon rentry, the new tempo did not gel. The orchestra did not know when to move from note to note, and so each waited upon a colleague and the orchestra delayed more and more behind. Again, this is what one does when you fear that sticking your neck out will get it chopped off.

As for dynamics, contrasts were largely absent, not because the orchestra lacks the ability to make them or because the composer left them out, but because contrasts are risky and dangerous where one is not sure where the true pulse is.

Podiumnal arhythmia was my working theory going into the Beethoven, and I think I was proved correct.

The very opening to Beethoven's First Piano Concerto is easy to play. It's just C Major scales after all. But it monstrously hard to play really well. It has to be both quiet and yet precise as a laser beam at the same time, as if one were playing fortissimo from two miles away.

The pulse has to be set from the first instant, and it has to continue unabated through the silence. It is particularly difficult to play for an orchestra suffering from podiumnal arhythmia:

And that was the case Saturday night. The pulse did not settle into a healthy sinus rhythm until the trumpets and tympani laid down a foundation in bar 16 on which the rest of the orchestra could rely:

As a matter of personal preference, I would not mind if tympanist Ronald Holdman drove the orchestra more from the back seat. And I think the orchestra would benefit from it.

The orchestra came together as well when soloist, Jon Kimura Parker, stepped in to provide the pulse. He was the quintessential example of a healthy heartbeat.

In the quicker movements, Beethoven thrives on switching the metric accents to places where it is not expected. Parker accomplished this musical game in spades. His playing, like much of Beethoven's music, made each note sound inevitable and surprising all at the same time. Quite a feat, that. He could shift the agogic accent, keep the heartbeat going, and yet change the subdivision in between the beats or the space between the beats just enough that passage work was expressive rather than merely mechanical. Every subdivision of every beat was logical and inevitable and yet fresh and surprising.

The second movement in particular was a real treat, because it was a true collaboartion between Parker and the Associate Principal Clarinet, Thomas LeGrand. The two instruments carry on a dialogue through the movement, and the rest of us, audience and orchestra alike, are just along for a wonderful ride. It was spontaneous music making on a very high level, each reacting to and playing off the other's contribution.

Finally, Petrushka--or Petrouchka.


Pablo Heras-Casado

 Stand outs for me included Scott Holshouser providing both color and pulse at the same time on piano. The orchestra responded and generated beautiful colorations up to the limits of what Jones Hall will allow.

Likewise, Prinicpal Flutist, Aralee Dorough projected a beautiful and flawless sound in calling the puppets of the ballet to life at rehearsal number 60.

The section horn playing was clarion clear and unforced in the unison forte cantabile in the Shrove Tide Fair after rehearsal 173.

And David Kirk, pincipal tubist, makes a very convincing bear.

Large sections of the last two thirds of the piece had real drive and impact--music to really dance to. It is a ballet, after all. And to be completely fair, I do think that Heras-Casado created or inspired some of that energy and drive.

But the performance overall confirmed my thesis that music happens best with Heras-Casado when someone else is willing to step up, provide the pulse, and drive the orchestra from within.

The best example of this happened after rehearsal number 42. Stravinsky switches from mixed meter using the quarter note as a constant to mixed meters using the eighth note as the constant. Time switches from 3/8 to 3/4 to 5/8 and eventually to 2/4. All the big beats are either two eighth notes or three eighth notes.

But the eighth note cannot waiver even a fraction, and the 3/8 beats must be 3 and not a fraction more. It must be like Monty Python's Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch:

 First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.

Heras-Casado preferred the "three and a fraction" variety--pausing at the top of a 3/8 beat, as if not to exist in the space time continuum. That is "right out." The whole orchestra will swallow their tongues while their hearts explode. They shall "snuff it."

The cure? Drive the orchestra from within--for example the trumpet section driving eighth notes with relelntless precision without regard to the sweeping gestures greeting them from atop the podium. Typically, as long as someone who creates sound by blowing into an instrument or beating thereon had the eighth note, the orchestra could overcome a host of woes.

If not? Not.