Sunday, February 5, 2023

Leonard Slatkin Returns to DSO Podium

Yesterday saw the return of Music Director Laureate Leonard Slatkin to the podium of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) for the latest Live from Orchestra Hall Webcast. He introduced the program to the audience as one that he had been meaning to perform for three years, acknowledging that the original planned performance had been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since I only learned about DSO Webcasts during the pandemic, I feel as if luck had a hand in my experiencing the program that Slatkin had in mind.

The first half was shared by twentieth-century composers Igor Stravinsky and Béla Bartók, both born in Europe and later citizens of the United States of America. Their respective compositions involved different subsets of the full DSO ensemble. The program began with Stravinsky’s “Symphonies of Wind Instruments,” originally scored for 24 separate parts in 1920 and revised for 23 separate parts in 1947. This was followed by Bartók’s four-movement “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” (which includes a piano counting as a percussion instrument).

During the intermission interview, Slatkin talked about how these pieces were performed frequently in the Fifties and Sixties but then began to fall out of favor. One reason may have been the emergence of a new generation of composers. Then, in the last few decades, there has been an interest in prioritizing “minority” composers (by virtue of gender and/or race), leading to a fair amount of exclusion of “dead white European males.”

Since I was born about two years after Slatkin, I share his memories of how repertoire choices have changed over the decades. The Bartók selection was actually one of the first works I heard performed at a subscription concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra. However, at the other end of the time line, I am not sure I ever heard the Stravinsky selection in concert until Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) returned to the podium of the San Francisco Symphony to conduct it this past November.

Screen shot from last night’s streamed performance

In writing about that performance, I explained that Stravinsky used the word “symphony” in its original Greek denotation of “sounding together.” The score consists of a series of short phrases, each of which involves a different combination of the individual wind players. The camera work for the Webcast was particularly helpful in this regard, providing a visual journey through those different instrumental combinations. The above screen shot shows an example of one of the camera angles.

Those unfamiliar with the Bartók selection may not know that it actually involves two string sections, facing each other from opposite sides of the stage. The celesta shares the center with the piano; and the timpani and battery have their usual places in the rear. Bartók serves up some of the richest polyphony in the twentieth-century repertoire, beginning with a ten-voice fugue presented by the opposing string sections. Those familiar with Bartók probably also know that, in his polyphony, there is never a thematic subject that does not appear in inversion at some time or another. While the fugue itself is darkly sober, one can still appreciate the occasional prankishness that Bartók brings to his counterpoint.

As might be expected, this was more than the camera crew could manage. Yes, there were times when the ear could be guided by the eye. Nevertheless, one could only really appreciate how Bartók deployed his resources with split-screen images; and those never figured in the video of last night’s performance. (I wonder if Slatkin has the some fond memories of Jordan Whitelaw’s video work for Evening at Symphony on PBS that I do. Whitelaw was a master of split-screen images of polyphony.) Fortunately, Slatkin’s command of this score meant that the ears could be escorted through the overall structure of this composition, both in the overall structures and in the detailed attention to the diversity of instrumental sonorities.

The second half of the program was devoted entirely to Johannes Brahms’ Opus 15 (first) piano concerto in D minor with Garrick Ohlsson as soloist. Since Emanuel Ax had performed this concerto with MTT in the second of the two SFS programs he conducted this past November, I feel as if I have been getting my fill of that rather youthful effort. In Detroit Ohlsson gave the concerto as much attention as would be given to a more “mature” composition; and the camera work provided an excellent account of the focus that he brought to negotiating the plethora of notes, which, in the wrong hands, would come across as excessive. This clearly made for a sharp shift from the repertoire of the first half of the program, but both conductor and soloist turned that contrast into a thoroughly engaging listening experience.

Ohlsson returned to present his audience with an encore. He performed the first of Frédéric Chopin’s three Opus 15 nocturnes, composed in the key of F major. (Did Ohlsson decide that one good Opus 15 deserves another?) This was the perfect selection to provide the calm after the storm!

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