Weilerstein Solos on Latest DSO Live-Stream

For the second year in a row, cellist Alisa Weilerstein appeared as concerto soloist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) in a performance that was live-streamed. Last year she performed Edward Elgar’s Opus 85 cello concerto in E minor. This year was, in the words of Monty Python, “something completely different.”

Alisa Weilerstein and Joan Tower taking bows after the performance of “A New Day” (from the YouTube live-stream of the concert being discussed)

The difference was that Weilerstein performed a concerto explicitly written for her, and DSO co-commissioned its composition. The composer was Joan Tower, who was present in Orchestra Hall for the occasion. The concerto, given the title “A New Day,” was structured in four movements, each of which had its own title:

1. Daybreak
2. Working Out
3. Mostly Alone
4. Into the Night

In the notes I jotted down during the performance, I suggested that the last movement implied a subtitle: “Farewell to Life.”

Ironically, I have had little exposure to Tower’s music. However, the real irony is that my last encounter with that music took place less than a year ago, when Marin Alsop conducted the San Francisco Symphony in a performance of Tower’s “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman.” As a result, I am finally beginning to get my head around her music; and my efforts were reinforced by Weilerstein’s encore selection, Tower’s “Six Variations” for solo cello.

Fortunately, I was able to enjoy a bit more familiarity on either side of the program. The opening selection was “Three Latin American Dances” by Gabriela Lena Frank. However, my awareness of her music goes back at least as early as my Examiner.com days in November of 2012 when the 2012–2013 BluePrint season of the New Music Ensemble at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music presented her “Manchay Tiempo” (time of fear). In that context I was glad to see that, under Bignamini’s baton, the DSO ensemble served up a stimulating account of Frank’s Latin-based rhetoric.

All of this “recent” music was sharply contrasted by the final selection on the program: Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 60 (fourth) symphony in B-flat major. This symphony tends to be overshadowed by its two “monumental neighbors,” Opus 55, the third (“Eroica”) symphony in E-flat major and Opus 67, the (say no more) fifth symphony in C minor. What amuses me most about Opus 60 is the possibility that Beethoven may have known a thing or two about Henry Purcell. The trio section of the third movement scans perfectly with a bawdy catch set to music by Purcell:

     Tis women makes us love,
     'tis love that makes us sad,
     'tis sadness makes us drink,
     and drinking makes us mad.

Given that there is a fair amount of humor in the rest of Opus 60, I have to believe that other lovers of this symphony have also encountered this “Purcell connection!”