Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard (photograph by Julia Wesely, courtesy of SFS)
Last night in Davies Symphony Hall marked the first of four performances of the next-to-last subscription program in the 2021–22 season of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen was again on the podium, and the concerto soloist was pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Over the course of the four appearances, Aimard is performing two different piano concertos by Béla Bartók. Last night and tonight are devoted to the first concerto, composed in 1926. The remaining two concerts will present the third concerto, which Bartók composed (and did not quite complete) on his deathbed.
The second half of the program was devoted primarily to Ottorino Respighi’s tone poem “Pines of Rome.” However, both the Bartók and Respighi offerings were preceded by an “overture” of sorts. The program began with Luciano Berlo’s “Quattro versioni originali della ‘Ritirata notturna di Madrid,’” (four original versions from Luigi Boccherini's “Withdrawal by Night in Madrid”), while the Respighi selection was preceded by the string orchestra version of Jessie Montgomery’s “Strum,” given its first SFS performance. (Some readers may recall that Montgomery’s string quintet version of “Strum” was included on the most recent SFS Chamber Music program at the end of last month.)
It would be fair to say that Bartók’s first piano concerto reflected the composer’s awareness of the work of Igor Stravinsky. Most likely he had experienced the flamboyant primitivism of “The Rite of Spring;” but he was also aware of the concerto for piano and wind instruments, which Stravinsky had completed in 1924. Both of these compositions may have encouraged Bartók to pay as much attention to instrumentation as he did to the virtuosity of the solo piano work in his first concerto.
That attention is most evident in the second movement, most of which involves the piano being accompanied only by a prodigious variety of percussion instruments. It is only after the halfway point in this movement that Bartók gradually introduces relatively brief motifs for the wind players. All of the movement is executed with the sort of hushed quality one might expect in the soundtrack for a horror movie; and Bartók’s instrumentation skills were so acute that one really does sit in suspense wondering what will happen next. Mind you, that suspense owes much to the interaction between soloist and conductor, and the chemistry between Aimard and Salonen could not have been better. (They are currently working on a joint project to record all three Bartók concertos with SFS.)
On the other hand suspense never really figured in Respighi’s playbook. His skills lay in his deep understanding in the capacity of every individual instrument. He could then blend those sonorities with the same skill that a fine painter can blend his colors. Nevertheless, while Respighi could tease out dark shadings in moments of quietude, his favorite dynamic level was fortissimo (if not louder). Salonen’s interpretation of “The Pines of Rome” was thus a lush overflow of sonorities coming from every corner of the Davies stage, along with an offstage trumpet behind the terrace seating and, during the final climax, two trumpets and four trombones in the upper balcony. (Mind you, by the time the instruments on stage were going full at it, one could barely hear those six brass players up in the rafters.)
Far more satisfying was the string ensemble version of “Strum.” As I observed last month, Montgomery explores a prodigious variety of sonorities emerging from the different instruments in the string family. Her command of rhetoric makes this “guided tour” of sonorities as compelling as it is diverse. Expanding the score from individual string instruments to an ensemble just made that tour all the more engaging for its extended scope of variety. Given all that diversity, it is a bit difficult to remember that the original version of “Strum” was composed for a cello quintet.
Diversity of sonorities also figures in Berlo’s treatment of Boccherini. Part of the fun of listening to this rethinking of eighteenth-century music is that those “four original versions” are superimposed on each other, after having been unfolded for the listener one-by-one. Nevertheless, by putting all of his cards on the table relatively quickly, there is a bit of a sense that Berio is showing off a one-trick pony. Nevertheless, the trick is clever enough that one does not mind the pony hanging around for a bit longer than one might have expected.
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