REVIEW: LARA ST. JOHN/TUCSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

posted by James Reel

    American orchestras have locked themselves into two concert formats: a very heavy overture/concerto/symphony routine, and a shlocky pops formula of hack arrangements than can be played after only one rehearsal, before backing up performers who have no natural place in the orchestra habitat. So it’s especially refreshing that Tucson Symphony Orchestra music director George Hanson has broken that format for the orchestra’s current cycle. It’s the sort of thing that used to count as a pops program: an attractive soloist in an appealing concerto, sandwiched between sequences of well-rehearsed light classics.
    The hook: “At the Movies—Symphony Style.” It was mostly a program of classical items that found their way into films. Two of the three exceptions were violinist Lara St. John’s contributions: Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto, which incorporates themes from several of the composer’s film scores, and the encore, John Williams’ theme from Schindler’s List.
    Korngold was a Viennese child prodigy composer, born at the very end of the Romantic era, whose allegiance to Romanticism lost him credibility in the concert hall but served him well in Hollywood. His concert works for orchestra, aside from the Violin Concerto and Much Ado About Nothing Suite, are interesting primarily for their arresting orchestration and metric complexities; Korngold’s melodic gift seemed to fade when he wasn’t writing film scores or, oddly enough, chamber music. So the presence of themes from movies like Anthony Adverse and The Prince and the Pauper gives Korngold’s 1947 concerto a strength and memorability that it may otherwise have lacked. You could think if it as a counterpart to Samuel Barber’s violin concerto, but with more voluptuous orchestration; or, going back to Korngold’s decadent Viennese roots, it’s like Franz Schreker, but with more clear-cut tunes.
    The work was first recorded by the icily brilliant Jascha Heifetz, and more recently recorded by the smoldering Gil Shaham and Anne-Sophie Mutter. St. John’s performance fell between these polar extremes, so it would be tempting to call it “equatorial” if that didn’t imply a heat and humidity that, frankly, barely registered in an otherwise engaging performance. St. John’s tone was a bit thin, but that’s partly because Korngold keeps the notes in the violin’s upper positions most of the time. She did lead off in good Korngold style, with exaggerated portamento, big slides between notes that fit right in with Korngold’s time and place(s). In the slow movement, though, she couldn’t quite hold the errant main theme together (this is what the Berg Violin Concerto might have sounded like had Berg not gone 12-tone), and the mercurial finale, though very well played, seemed rather earnest, not sufficiently quicksilver. Ultimately, though, we should be grateful that this unjustly neglected concerto received a serious, more-than-competent presentation.
    That said, it might be churlish to wish that St. John and Hanson had instead offered John Corigliano’s Red Violin Concerto, another work derived from film music, simply to provide maximum contrast with the rest of a very Romantic program. The sole contrast came from Bernard Herrmann’s angular Psycho suite, with its preponderance of Bartókain night-music menace and its infamous, slashing shower sequence. Hanson led the TSO strings in a fine, incisive performance that boasted firm, resonant bass lines—something you can’t always hear when these string sections are competing with the brass. The strings also played admirably in Barber’s famous Adagio; Hanson elicited a significant change in their color for the final full statement of the theme, a very effective detail not often found in other performances.
    Even with the full orchestra on stage, this was one of the orchestra’s best-balanced performances in a very long time. Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries was especially notable in this regard. The performance didn’t achieve peak intensity, but that’s because, after all, the music isn’t about bombing a Vietnamese village but about airlifting dead Norse spearchuckers to heaven. Hanson kept every section, every line, perfectly clear, not an easy feat in a piece dominated by constant brass work.
    The Intermezzo from Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and the Barcarolle from Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann also fared well, but Hanson and the orchestra came through best of all in a witty and sparkling performance of Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The woodwinds proved especially nimble here.
    The one real disappointment on opening night was attendance, which was miserable in the balcony and spotty down below. This might be a good time for TSO administrators to remember the law of supply and demand: When supply exceeds demand, lower your prices, don’t raise them.