It has been a while since I took the time for live-streaming the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) for its latest Live from Orchestra Hall Webcast. For that matter, it has been even longer (one month short of a year, according to my records) since I have seen Music Director Jader Bignamini on the podium. (My most recent article was about a visit to the podium by Nicholas McGegan.) In addition, this was the first time that my wife and I live-streamed a Sunday matinee in Detroit, rather than the usual evening performance.
Alisa Weilerstein performing with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (screen shot from the video being discussed)
It has also been quite a while since I saw Alisa Weilerstein appear as a concert soloist. However, this particular program presented Edward Elgar’s Opus 85 cello concerto in E minor; and neither my wife nor I wanted to miss it. We were not disappointed. Weilerstein was as passionate as ever as she negotiated the wide spectrum of emotional dispositions that unfolded during this concerto’s three movements. Her chemistry with Bignamini could not have been better, and he seemed to enjoy this opportunity to present Elgar’s music as much as she did. As might be expected, she followed her concerto performance with an encore, the Sarabande movement from the BWV 1010 unaccompanied cello suite in E-flat major by Johann Sebastian Bach.
[side-bar commentary: Unannounced encores can be frustrating, particularly when I have to account for them. While Weilerstein was playing, I jotted down the opening rhythmic motif and wrote “Sarabande.” Then, during the intermission, I pulled out my Casals CDs, worked my way through the Saraband movements of the Bach solo cello suites until I found the right one! Sometimes, my computer room has better affordances than the concert hall!]
Furthermore, Weilerstein seemed to enjoy her visit to Detroit enough to take a back seat in the cello section for the second half of the program! This was “warhorse time” for the ensemble, a performance of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Opus 35, his symphonic suite Scheherazade. It is “symphonic” because it is in four movements, but the structure is more of a multi-movement tone poem than a symphony. The suite movements are inspired by episodes from One Thousand and One Nights. However, it would be an exaggeration to say that the music provides a “literary” account of the source texts. More appropriate would be that the composer was inspired by reflecting on those texts.
I have now seen enough DSO telecasts to know that Bignamini really enjoys the rich sonorities of a full ensemble. With Scheherazade he was in hog heaven and clearly enjoying every minute of it. What was important, though, was that it seemed as if his joyful enthusiasm was faithfully reflected by every member of the ensemble (even the “back benchers” in the string sections). This was far from a here-we-go-again account of music that most of us have heard too many times. Rather, the combination of the attentive performance and the well-conceived video perspective made for an experience that was both refreshing and stimulating.
The video was not quite as perceptive for the opening selection, the overture that Felix Mendelssohn composed for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The camera crew managed to overlook the tuba player during his only solo (which was limited to four notes)! Otherwise, both the performance and the camera work allowed for full appreciation of the freshness of a composition that is now over two centuries old. There are often times when I feel tired of Mendelssohn’s music, but there was nothing tiring about Bignamini’s approach to this particular score.
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