Yesterday evening, my wife and I settled down with dinner to watch the latest YouTube livestream of a performance by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The title of the program was Bernstein & Appalachian Spring, which accounted for about half of the selections. Most readers probably know that “Appalachian Spring” was composed by Aaron Copland for choreography by Martha Graham, and the “Bernstein” in the title was Leonard Bernstein. These icons of twentieth-century music were flanked on either side by the next generation of composers, beginning with Joan Tower and concluding with John Adams.
Paul Huang as soloist in the performance of Leonard Bernstein’s “Serenade” (screen shot from yesterday’s live-stream)
The conductor for this occasion was Peter Oundjian, and the soloist was violinist Paul Huang. The latter performed the Bernstein selection, “Serenade, after Plato’s ‘Symposium.’” This is often referred to as one of Plato’s dialogues, but it involves exchanges between Socrates and six other speakers, all presenting their personal praises of love. Bernstein divided those speakers across five movements as follows:
- Phaedrus, Pausanias
- Aristophanes
- Eryximachus
- Agathon
- Socrates, Alcibiades
Sadly, the video for this performance provided no cues for the individual movements, which pretty much undermined the effort of any listener to negotiate the overall narrative of the music. Huang followed Bernstein with an encore performance of his own solo arrangement of a Taiwanese folk song.
Things were pretty much the same for “Appalachian Spring.” Graham’s choreography stands as a cornerstone for the early pioneer days in American history. The suite that Copland extracted eliminates much of the pioneer narrative, dwelling more on refreshing aspects of spring itself. That said, like the ballet, it concludes with a musical elaboration of the hymn “Simple Gifts;” and, in the suite, that music is anything but simple! Nevertheless, the music is familiar to many listeners; and Oundjian’s interpretation could not have been more engaging.
The program was framed by two contemporary composers, beginning with a suite that Joan Tower extracted from her “Concerto for Orchestra.” This was one of those energetic scores that attends to every instrument in the ensemble. Unfortunately, the camera work could not keep up with Tower’s pace; and I found that I was much better off attending to listening while ignoring the viewing. Adams kept up with that pace in one of his more recent compositions: “Frenzy: a short symphony.” Personally, I wish it had been shorter!
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