A Disappointing Tchaikovsky Offering from DSO

Violinist Karen Gomyo taking her bow while conductor Mark Wigglesworth observes from the podium of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (from the Web page for the performance being discussed)

Once again I decided to forego a “watch party” invitation from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) in favor of watching the concerto offering through the DSO Replay Web site, rather than Facebook Live. This time the title of the watch party was Music of Tchaikovsky; and the “main attraction” was, again, a concerto offering, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 35 violin concerto in D major featuring violinist Karen Gomyo performing with conductor Mark Wigglesworth. The performance was recorded on December 2, 2017.

This was one of those fortuitous circumstances in which I had encountered both of these artists in Davies Symphony Hall at subscription concerts by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). However, for both of the performers, my experiences in Davies were definitely “something completely different.” The Wigglesworth program took place in December of 2008 (before I had “gotten really serious” in my tenure with Examiner.com); and it was sadly clear that the audience was there to listen to Lang Lang playing Frédéric Chopin's first (Opus 11) piano concerto in E minor. However, because this was in the second half of the program, everyone had to sit through a selection of instrumental excerpts from the operas of Richard Wagner before getting their “concerto fix.” The good news was that Wigglesworth left a strong and positive impression not only in terms of how he chose to interpret those excerpts but in the logic behind ordering them. Not only was this the high point of the evening (for me, at least); but also it left me wondering why he had never been invited to conduct an entire Wagner opera for the San Francisco Opera.

Gomyo, on the other hand, seems to have made her SFS debut during the 2007 Summer in the City series of concerts, performing the same Tchaikovsky concerto that she would later bring to Detroit. However, my own first contact with her was, again, “something completely different.” She returned to Davies in November of 2018, this time as a subscription soloist. Her selection was Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 77 violin concerto in A minor, performed under the baton of Jakub Hrůša. I described that performance as “thoroughly fearless” with just the right combination of technical mastery and rhetorical intensity.

I feel it necessary to emphasize the strong impressions left by both conductor and soloist, because there was almost no trace of those impressions in the Detroit Tchaikovsky performance. Instead, there was a pervasive sense of the routine, almost as if this was one of those occasions planned to “keep the customers satisfied.” Now, to be fair to both of these artists, Shostakovich’s concerto is definitely not for everyone; and even the music of Wagner still has to contend with a fair amount of reluctance from the “general public.” Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky’s concerto still has its virtues; and it was disappointing that they never really emerged on this particular video recording.

Mind you, the video work itself may have been part of the problem. In contrast to my previous viewing experiences, there was little sense of imaginative awareness in connecting the visual experience with the music itself. Yes, it was nice to have a generous share of close-ups of Gomyo through which one could appreciate how she was shaping her solo lines. However, when it came to the instrumental contexts for those solos, the camera work was too uninformative most of the time and painfully aggravating when what must have been a minor slip knocked the image out of focus.

Both soloist and conductor were clearly capable of better things; but conditions in Detroit never seemed to allow any of those “better things” to emerge.