REVIEW: BEETHOVEN/PAAVO JARVI

posted by James Reel

    For a forthcoming issue of Fanfare:

BEETHOVEN Symphonies: No. 3, “Eroica”; No. 8 * Paavo Järvi, cond; German Ch Phil Bremen * RCA 88697-13066-2 (hybrid SACD: 69:32)

    The most important Beethoven symphony cycles on SACD are DG’s two-channel reissue of the early-1960s Karajan set, which I reviewed in Fanfare 27:5 (“Karajan’s first DG Beethoven cycle has been a standard by which others are judged for 40 years, and this new SACD remastering ensures that it will remain so for the next generation”); Haitink on LSO Live (received orgasmically in England, more mutedly on this side of the pond); and Väska on Bis (not yet complete, but so far it’s a stunning achievement). Now here comes Paavo Järvi with his Bremen chamber orchestra, and his first installment blows Haitink out of the water fully rises to the high standards of Väska’s identical coupling of the Third and Eighth symphonies, which I reviewed in Fanfare 30:2.
    The main difference between Järvi and Väska has to do not with interpretive choices so much as the inevitable contrasts in texture between Järvi’s small orchestra and Väska’s large one (Minnesota). Even so, Järvi’s strings are definitely up front, and despite their comparatively small numbers they do dominate the tuttis, although the winds have plenty of presence in their solo and ensemble passages.
    Järvi’s “Eroica” is full of punch and brio and fine detail. Just listen to the pulse of the stuttering passage about half a minute into the first movement, the carefully crafted articulation and dynamic control, the supple phrasing, with a strong bass line throughout. The quality of playing throughout the orchestra is superb. The violins are nimble; all the strings largely eschew vibrato, to suspenseful effect in the first movements and with eerie results in the funeral march. The Scherzo is rollicking but never out of control, and the final movement is notable for the clarity of the various voices.
    Järvi launches the Eighth swiftly, but he also keeps the music light, graceful and almost dancelike while applying full force to the knockabout passages. The whole symphony goes by in this manner, and the final movement’s scurrying material is played remarkably quickly, and remarkably cleanly. Here, Järvi is clearly superior to the less witty Väska.
    Compared to Väska, Järvi’s signature has fewer flourishes but is no less bold. Järvi’s attention to precision and detail, and his intelligent forcefulness, alongside a reluctance to over-personalize the interpretation, call to mind Szell/Cleveland in the “Eroica” (also available in an SACD reincarnation).
    Regarding the sonics, there’s a sense of space behind the orchestra, rather than in front of it, giving the ensemble a particular resonance without making it seem distant.
    If you’re looking for a single Beethoven cycle in surround sound, should you invest in Väska or Järvi? Judging from this first installment, Järvi’s traversal has much in common with Väska’s, although the latter conductor tends to italicize his points just a bit more. Each of these in-progress cycles is superb, and you choice may come down to whether you want your Beethoven to sound full or lean.

BEHAVE

posted by James Reel

    From the Seattle Weekly, here’s refutation of the silly notion that audiences at classical concerts need to be free to be noisy, restless nuisances. Look: If you can’t manage to sit down, shut up and pay attention, you shouldn’t be allowed out of the house, not even to go to a movie.

REVERSION

posted by James Reel

    My contribution to the latest Tucson Weekly:

    Max Branscomb is back as the writer of Borderlands Theater's annual A Tucson Pastorela. That means the retelling of Lucifer's attempts to waylay the shepherds making their way to Bethlehem has returned to its old rhythm of gentle laughs.
    Last year's more thoughtful treatment by Toni Press-Coffman has mostly fallen by the wayside (although she's still credited as a provider of "additional material"), and that's a pity, but it also makes sense: The nativity story has everything to do with faith, and hardly anything to do with reason. If you think too hard about what's going on, you may miss the message.

    You’ll find the full review here.

SIR TOMMY ON SIR EDDIE

posted by James Reel

    If you believe that my occasional swipes at the music of Edward Elgar—for instance, here, here, here (one that apparently alarmed TSO concertmaster Steven Moeckel) and here—are out of line, consider what conductor Sir Thomas Beecham said of Elgar in his autobiography, A Mingled Chime:

The better side of him is to be found in miniature movements, where he is often fanciful, charming and, in one or two instances, exquisite. His big periods and ‘tuttis’ are less happy; bombast and rhetoric supplant too frequently real weight and poetical depth, and he strays with a dangerous ease to the borderline of a military rhodomontade that is hardly distinguishable from the commonplace and the vulgar.

    Beecham offered favorable comments on certain other aspects of Elgar’s work, but he pretty thoroughly damned Elgar’s handling of those elements that generally contribute to “significance” or “greatness” in music. Now that Elgar’s 150th anniversary year is within days of its conclusion, perhaps we can focus on more worthy topics.
    Just don’t get me started on Beecham’s advocacy for Delius.

REVIEW: TUCSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/GEORGE HANSON, CONDUCTOR

posted by James Reel

    If the Tucson Symphony’s current cycle is distressingly cautious—three shameless crowd-pleasers from an orchestra and music director formerly willing to take a chance with such substantial new works as John Corigliano’s First Symphony—at least the performances are vibrant, secure, and get right to the heart of each score.
    Consider the opening section of Rossini’s William Tell Overture, played last night with full awareness of the music’s origin in the opera house; the cello work began as a recitative, then smoothed out into an aria. (Was Mary Beth Tyndall substituting for Nelzimar Neves in the principal spot? From my distance and angle I couldn’t tell, but the principal’s sound was a bit sweeter and less robust than the Neves norm—not inferior, just different.) Similarly, the phrasing was nice and loose in the flute-oboe conversation in the pastoral third episode, even though conductor George Hanson kept things moving at a fairly brisk clip. Because of Hanson’s refusal to linger in the first and third sections, the storm and the galloping finale sounded a bit slower than they really were, yet the performance was suitably rousing.
    Hanson also cheated the first movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony of some essential tempo contrast; the introduction didn’t seem much slower than the main matter, so we lost the sequence of anticipation and release that Beethoven built into the score. There’s little else to complain about (aside from a few stray instrumental bobbles), and much to admire, even if one could quibble with some of Hanson’s decisions. His tempos tended to be brisk, taking the composer’s disputed metronome markings fairly seriously though perhaps not going all the way, yet Hanson held back the Scherzo’s central trio in the old-fashioned manner, not quite conveying a sense of either song or dance. The Allegretto was no-nonsense, and the final movement was mostly well-handled, after the violins’ dismal first two utterances—it was as if half of them had forgotten they’d have to start the movement attaca and barely scraped out a whimper where their notes should have been shouts. Things proceeded splendidly after that. Hanson maintained careful balance across the orchestra, not letting subsidiary lines (the horns’, for instance) come so far forward that the music succumbed to its own banality. Melodically, this movement is frankly dreadful, but it can pack a wallop through sheer momentum, which Hanson and the TSO provided without becoming pointlessly frantic (the main fault of Gustavo Dudamel’s recent, heavily hyped recording).
    Beethoven and Manuel de Falla had fundamentally different concepts of orchestral weight and color, but some of their music has more in common than you might think. The centerpiece of last night’s concert was music from Falla’s ultra-Spanish ballet The Three-Cornered Hat (the two suites, about two-thirds of the full score). Both Beethoven’s Seventh and Falla’s Three-Cornered Hat require rhythmic spring and unashamed exuberance, and the Falla certainly got that and more out of Hanson and the TSO.
    OK, the horns were consistently too loud, but otherwise the performance was remarkable for the clarity of the many layers of line and color, the rhapsodic sweep of the strings, the always firm bass, and above all the clean articulation and sharp rhythm that make this music sound truly Spanish.

BLACK, WHITE AND GRAY

posted by James Reel

    This week I’ve elected not to monopolize the pages of the Tucson Weekly, and give other contributors some space. I have only one offering this time around, a review of a play I highly recommend:

    On a farm outside Johannesburg, South Africa, there lives a little girl named Elizabeth Grace. She spends so much time in the big, fragrant syringa tree on the property that her nanny, a patient Xhosa woman named Salamina, calls the girl Lizzie Monkey. The syringa tree is a place of small wonders, as well as a hideout and a refuge--not only for Lizzie, but for her Xhosa and Zulu neighbors trying to avoid brutal encounters with the white authorities.
    The Syringa Tree is also a play by the South African-born playwright and actress Pamela Gien. It involves 24 characters--white and black, young and old, male and female--all played by a single performer. That's Patagonia resident Belinda Torrey, in a fine production now on stage at Beowulf Alley Theatre.

    You’ll find the full review here.