Yesterday evening my wife and I settled down to dinner while watching the latest “free live HD webcast” presented by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO). The guest soloist was cellist Steven Isserlis, whose visit to San Francisco when I was first building up my writing chops I still fondly remember. His concerto selection was Robert Schumann’s Opus 129, composed in the key of A minor. The “overture” for the program was “Les Préludes” by Franz Liszt, Schumann’s contemporary and colleague. The second half of the program vaulted over to the other end of the nineteenth century with two of Richard Strauss’ best known tone poems, his Opus 20 “Don Juan” and the Opus 28 “Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks.”
Steven Isserlis with DSO in their performance of Schumann’s cello concerto (screen shot from the video being discussed)
From a video point of view, this program provided a generous number of opportunities for the viewer to visit the many sections of the ensemble. Indeed, Strauss’ imaginative approach to instrumentation brought a significant number of the members of the orchestra into the spotlight, and the video director was well aware of these moments. (Readers may recall that, back in my student days, telecasts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra were meticulously directed by Jordan Whitelaw, allowing solo passages to be highlighted visually as well as audibly.) Video also well accounted for the interplay between soloist and ensemble in the Schumann concerto. Isserlis then “took the spotlight” for his solo encore, Pablo Casals’ arrangement of the Catalan Christmas carol “Cant dels Ocells” (song of the birds). With all this diversity of narrative, “Les Préludes” served as the perfect introduction in both letter and spirit!
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