Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra - Friday February 5, 2010 - Manfred Honeck, Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin

While what will undoubtedly be known as the Great Blizzard of 2010 relentlessly fell upon the city, all was not serene within Heinz Hall. Well, there were some serene moments but those provided brief moments of respite amidst the rest. It was a simple program featuring just two pieces, both warhorses in these parts and probably elsewhere. The Brahms Violin Concerto is perennially (and this has been true for over fifty years) the most performed violin concerto in major American concert halls. The Mahler First Symphony has a great deal of competition but must rank fairly high on the list of most performed symphonies in the last thirty years at least. It definitely is the most performed piece by the pairing of Manfred Honeck and the PSO. He choose it for his first official concert here as music director in September 2008. I was there at that show and was interested to hear it again. I don't remember having had a chance to hear the same piece twice by the same conductor and orchestra over just a 17 month period. In the meantime, the orchestra played in on tour just last September.

Anne-Sophie Mutter is certainly one of the great ones of her generation. The only other violinist in their forties of comparable stature (she is 46) is Joshua Bell. While he IS a great violinist, my money is on Anne-Sophie. Her advocacy for contemporary composers is quite amazing. Lutoslawski, Rihm, Moret, Penderecki, Previn, Gubaidulina and Duteleux have all written pieces for her. However, on this occasion, she is advocating for Brahms. She played it with great flair. For example, she waited until the last possible moment to bring her violin under her chin for the entrance. That seemed to be a way of conveying a certain attitude. Her attacks had a lot of bite and I believe that works well in this piece. She worked well with the orchestra in this most symphonic of concertos. The long first movement came together and stayed together beautifully. The second movement had the sweetness needed to give respite between the intensity for the outer movements. The Oboe solo by Cynthia DeAlmeida was extraordinary. I am told she did it without a pause for a breath. While that is impressive, it only matters if the end result is as beautiful as it was on Friday. The finale was energetic, joyful, exiting. I do love Brahms music and generally feel that you can hear how carefully crafted it is. I believe that means he leaves out joyful exuberance in his music. I do hear it a few places: the end of the first symphony; the last movement of the First Piano Quartet; and of course in the finale to the Violin Concerto. That came through quite well in this performance.

Anne-Sophie did treat us to an encore as well and of course, it was Bach again. Not that I am complaining. She did NOT do the preludio from the Third Partita. She choose to follow exuberance with the quiet reserved Sarabande from the First Partita.

I have heard the Mahler First Symphony here in Pittsburgh many times over the last 29 years. I still have a special place in my heart for Zdenek Macal's version sometime in the early to mid Eighties. As I nted above, the PSO have already done it many times with Manfred Honeck. It is interesting that he wanted to work on it a bit more before taking it to New York. Going by my memory of the performance in September 2008 (which I loved, by the way), I felt like he was letting the orchestra loose a bit more (and maybe himself too). Like the last three weeks, he and the orchestra seem to be working well together. I was thinking about how clear his beat is and how enjoyable it is to watch his left hand as it is quite expressive. All of the wonderful oddness of the piece came through - the klezmer clarinet bit, the children's tune Frere Jacques (or Are You Sleeping, Brother John in this country) as a funeral dirge, the finale that seems endless until the horns stand for their final blow. This all seemed just a bit more unhinged, in a good way. Honeck's big signal for the last chord showed his exuberance. It also showed they were ready for the Big Apple.

The crowd was surprisingly large given the aforementioned blizzard. And the crowd went wild for both pieces, though bigger for the Mahler even than the Brahms.

Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic - November 9, 2009

This show was designed for the 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht. A German Jewish woman who was 4 years old in Stuttgart shared her remembrances. She reminded me that the Holocaust became the Holocaust later, that most believed that the upsurge in antisemitism in 1930's Germany was not different than other times and would fade. Kristallnact changed that for her father and he got her and their family out of Germany as soon as was possible. I was impressed by the fact that she did not feel proprietary about genocide, noting others targeted by the Nazis and those suffering similar fates since and even now.

The music was chosen to tie into this theme. The Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic was conducted by their new music director, Ronald Zollman. Martinu's Memorial to Lidice began the program. Lidice was a town in Czechoslovakia destroyed by the Nazi's in retaliation for the killing of an SS officer. I did not know this piece though I do have a good deal of Martinu's music. While a heavy piece for Martinu, this still sounded like Martinu to me. This is as it should be I suppose but I did not feel the music captured the horrors the piece was referencing. I was glad to hear Martinu live, which I believe was a first for me.

Erwin Schulhoff's first symphony came next. Schulhoff was a Czech Jew who died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1942. His symphony from 1925 was also new to me. Schulhoff, according to the program notes, was all over the place in terms of influences, Reger, Debussy Schoenberg and Jazz all noted. This piece was also all over the place in a way that I found pretty enjoyable and amusing. I was reminded of early Stravinsky (Petruska), Debussy and Symanowski with a brief mix of serious dissonances and weird percussion effects. There were also these martial sounding percussion moments at the end of movements that seemed like foreshadowing of the war to come. My feeling was that Schulhoff had captured the wildness of 1920's Germany quite well in this piece. The Orchestra presented the music well. I would like to hear it again and will have to look for a recording.

Unlike the first half of the show, the second half was all familiar music. The music was also performed without pauses for applause from the audience. Barber's Adagio for Strings opened. This was my second Adagio in a few weeks as I had just heard the PSO and Leonard Slatkin do it on October 23rd. So how does a student orchestra compare with a world class ensemble? The Carnegie Mellon strings did quite well. The interpretations were quite different. While I didn't time them, I would guess the PSO performance came in at about nine minutes while this performance had to be about 7 minutes (reminded me of a version I have by Leopold Stokowski). It was certainly not as intense of an experience. I wondered about Zollman's choices here: does he just prefer a faster tempo? was the faster tempo due to a student ensemble not being well suited to the slower tempo? or was the choice due to Zollman presenting this as the first "movement" in this half of the program? I don't know but as the last bits of the Adagio were fading, the percussion section was getting ready. Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw could hardly be more different from the Barber Adagio. Survivor is as furious as the Adagio is peaceful and comforting. Zollman went straight in without pause, the trumpet blaring and the percussion ringing loud. The narrator performed from the left box above the orchestra. This was the third time I have heard the "Survivor" live, each time it was an intense emotional experience and this was no exception. As the narrator, Douglas Ahlstedt, finished his last part and the orchestra and percussion reach their frenzied climax, it sent shivers down my spine and the chorus singing the Shema Yisroel brought tears to my eyes. I don't think there is a more intense seven minutes in all of classical music. Again without pause, Zollman started the Mahler Totenfeier (Burial Ceremony). All of us Mahler fans know this better as the music that became the first movement of his Second symphony. I have read that the differences are many but slight. I can't say that I could pick out any of them. While this piece probably presented the orchestra with it's most difficult challenges and they did sound at times like a very good student orchestra, this was a great choice for end of this program. Zollman was incisive without being rushed. It allowed me to recover my equilibrium after the Schoenberg.

As I noted in writing about Jennifer Koh's recital, a well designed program ends up being greater than the sum of it's parts. While the Barber was a bit of a stretch in terms of the historical tie in, it was perfect as a musical emotional set up of what came after. The CM Philharmonic brought things off well, while not achieving technical perfection they delivered a great concert. I thought Douglas Ahlstedt was spot on as the narrator in the Schoenberg, my favorite of the three performances I have seen.