First Impressions of Jader Bignamini in Detroit

Conductor Jader Bignamini (courtesy of Opus 3 Artists)

As I wrote yesterday, Jader Bignamini will begin serving as Music Director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) by launching the ensemble’s 2020–2021 season. Having had a highly positive encounter with DSO in cyberspace through their Live from Orchestra Hall archive of online performances, I decided that this would be a good time to experience one of Bignamini’s visits to the podium during the current season. There seemed to be two options at my disposal, and I decided to go with the one recorded earlier this season on October 18.

This was a straightforward overture-concerto-symphony program. The concerto soloist was Yooshin Song playing Max Bruch’s Opus 26 (first) violin concerto in G minor. The overture was the one composed by Mikhail Glinka for his Ruslan and Lyudmila opera. The symphony was Gustav Mahler’s fourth in G major, which can be classified as concertante, since the fourth movement is a setting of the Des Knaben Wunderhorn poem “Das himmlische Leben” (the heavenly life), scored for soprano voice. The soprano for this performance was the American lyric soprano Janai Brugger.

Bruch’s concerto is a familiar warhorse, but it still demands focused attention from the very beginning. Following five measures of introduction (primarily from the winds), the soloist must sustain the lowest note on the instrument, playing an open G string. Bruch’s score gives this note forte dynamics in contrast with the piano passage played by the winds, but it is clear that the expression of that note should not sound like an enormous boot stamping in a mud puddle. Song knew how to allow this note to insinuate itself, taking its time (“ad libitum” in the score) to come up to strength, after which she could let the following mini-cadenza unfold.

Song’s management of both subtlety and strength in this single measure set the tone for both her solo work and her engagement with Bignamini throughout all three movements of the concerto. It is worth bearing in mind that Bruch was not as imaginative in the domain of thematic development when compared with the technical virtuosity that could be evoked by Johannes Brahms. However, both Bruch and Brahms enjoyed the influence of violinist Joseph Joachim, who admired the Brahms concerto for its seriousness but found the Bruch to be “the most seductive” (in Joachim’s own words).

However, those seductive qualities owe more to the expressiveness of the performer than to the marks on the score pages. We can only imagine what those qualities were when Joachim played Opus 26. Song’s performance tended to keep both bodily motion and facial expressions to a minimum. Nevertheless, it would be fair to say that both she and Bignamini jointly knew how to make sure that every repetition of a theme was cast in its own unique dispositional attitude, making the entire performance one of the most expressively rich interpretation that I have encountered. By all rights, that should count as sufficiently seductive!

Bignamini’s approach to Glinka’s overture made it clear that he knew how to seize listener attention at the very beginning of a concert performance. His tempo was briskly energetic without ever coming across like a sprinter determined to win a hundred-yard dash. As was the case with the DSO recording discussed yesterday, the camera work provided a much better view of Bignamini’s technique than would be afforded by seeing only his back. Unlike Song he was not shy about communicating with the ensemble through both bodily motion and facial expressions. There was also a clear sense of joyousness in his body language, suggesting that he would establish an adventurous disposition that would permeate the entire program.

My guess is that many readers will assume that I chose this particular program because it would give me an opportunity to assess Bignamini’s talents in taking on a Mahler selection. Sadly, this was the one selection in which my reactions were mixed. Bignamini certainly exhibited clear ideas about how he wanted to approach this symphony, and during the first three movements DSO clearly grasped what he had in mind and delivered accordingly. That included the “real peak” climax (as Pierre Boulez would have put it) at the coda of the third movement, not so much a coda as a prolonged introduction to the imagery of the Wunderhorn poem that is sung in the final movement.

Unfortunately, the delivery of the poem itself did not live up to that introduction. My conjecture is that Brugger was not properly prepared for her performance, spending more time with her eyes glued to her part than in giving off any sense of the relationship between what she was singing and what everyone else (conductor and musicians alike) was doing. This was more than a little disappointing, given the richness of context that Mahler’s instrumental writing provided to reinforce the vocalist’s delivery.

In many respects the fourth is Mahler’s finest effort in compositing a “conventional” symphony, even if the fourth movement is a song setting. Bignamini’s conducting made it clear that he appreciated both Mahler’s respect for convention in the symphony and the devices he invoked to “push the envelope” into less conventional territory. From that point of view, the final movement is as much a “farewell” to past conventions as the final movement of Das Lied von der Erde is a “farewell” to life itself. The words of the Wunderhorn text (which deserved to have subtitles) thus play as much of a role in Mahler’s biography as they do in the overall catalog of his compositions. One can only hope that, in the near future, Bignamini can return to this symphony with a vocalist better attuned to the contextual significance of what she is singing.