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The Tepid and the Titanic

New York
Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center
07/30/2010 -  & July 31, 2010
Johann Sebastian Bach: Second Ricercare from The Musical Offering (Musikalisches Opfer), BWV 1079 (Arranged by Anton Webern)
Samuel Barber: Violin Concerto, Opus 14
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony Number 7 in A Major, Opus 92

James Ehnes (Violin)
Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Louis Langrée (Conductor)


L. Langrée (© Richard Termine)


The centuries were somersaulted around last night in the second Mostly Mozart concert of the season. Mr. Bach was transported up 200 years with a 20th Century makeover. Mr. Barber’s 1939 Violin Concerto would have sounded quite decorous if written by Max Bruch, who had been born exactly 100 years before. Only Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony sounded…well, literally early 19th Century, but for all practical aesthetic purposes, timeless. Nothing even approached the moniker of “Mostly Mozart”. But Wolfgang will have plenty of concerts before the August 21 closing


And how delightful to hear again the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, donning white jackets for the summer. With less than half the personnel of the usual NY Phil, they sounded especially good in the Beethoven. But Louis Langrée at the helm makes that easy. Taking his annual holiday from “mostly opera” stints, he has the enthusiasm, precision and obvious rapport with this ensemble to make excellent music when it suits him.


That, though, has its limitations, and the opening work last night did not do Mr. Langrée justice. Anton Webern had every right to orchestrate Bach’s Ricercare, since Bach himself never said what the six voices were to be–and since Bach had no hesitation in redoing his own contemporaries. But while the Bach notes are precisely the same (give or take a few timpani booms), it takes a special kind of conductor to lift Webern’s pointillistic fragmentation. And Mr. Langrée did not seem to be that kind of leader.


Yes, we had the spots of muted horn, the interjection of a trumpet, a whisper of violin, the dapples of clarinet. But Webern did call this, in German, a flecked sound melody. Mr. Langrée conducted an academic exercise. One expected him to stop after each phrase to describe which we had been hearing. What Bach–and even Webern–possessed were impetus and volition. This was a listless performance, lacking tension, lacking that all-important linear adhesion.


Mr. Langrée certainly did not disappoint with the Barber Violin Concerto, in spite of its stylistic retrogradation, I mentioned the Bruch Violin Concerto before, since both composers, in trying so earnestly for the pretty-pretty effect, avoided an underlying seriousness. Bruch at least had the excuse of being part of the Romantic era. Barber, who did write some lovely pieces, was born into the wrong century.


This hardly prevented the young Manitoba-born James Ehnes from essaying a terrific performance. Mr Barber laid out the lines with such elegance in the first two similar movements that it’s difficult for an accomplished fiddler to go wrong, and Mr. Ehnes played it with some soaring gorgeous lines. That last movement is pure presto technique. Here Mr. Ehnes showed that he is as technically assured as he is emotionally in tune with the music.


Finally, Mr. Langrée conducted his 48-piece, Beethoven-sized orchestra in a marvelous Seventh. Not a perfect one. The winds hardly stood out in the second movement, the grace notes of the scherzo and opening phrases of the finale were a bit blurred. But Mr. Langrée knew exactly how to proportion this work for the utmost effect.


The first movement grew with excitement, that chimerical Allegretto was taken at a good pace, with no opportunity to think mawkish. And the orgiastic finale (Wagner’s words, not mine) had leaps and jolts and all the unexpected furiosity of an irrepressible Titan.



Harry Rolnick

 

 

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