Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, Orchestra (Seat
V104, $72).
Program
Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K. 503 (1786) by Mozart (1756-91).
Symphony No. 3 in D minor (1873, rev. 1874, 1876-77, 1878
and 1888/89; ed. L. Nowak, 1959) by Bruckner (1824-96).
Anne couldn’t make this concert because she is staying
behind in the Boston area. I decided to
return one of the tickets and went by myself.
After an early dinner at home, I caught the 5:25 pm train to New York
City.
The one surprising thing about this concert was how
sparsely attended it was, even with a name like Ax. There were quite a few empty seats in front
of me and both seats next to me were empty.
In the “Alan Gilbert on This Program” section of the
Playbill, Gilbert talks about Mozart concertos being frequently paired with
Bruckner symphonies. That was certainly
news to me. And as I prepare to type
these notes, I looked through my prior entries with Bruckner, and none of them
was paired with a Mozart concerto. Since
none of those concerts had Gilbert as the conductor, perhaps Gilbert is one of
the few conductors that do that?
Besides, while both pieces were excellently played – more on that later –
I couldn’t hear any Austrian connection between the two very disparate pieces
of composition.
I have remarked on several occasions that I cannot tell a
good performance of a Mozart composition from a great one. But I have to make an exception: Ax truly put in a great performance. While the word “brilliance” isn’t usually
associated with a Mozart piano concerto, many other words do, and for me
tonight’s performance is even emotionally appealing. The music is great, but for me the deeper
appreciation is how great the performers were able to make it sound. With the exception of the second movement
(Andante) which I found a bit monotonous, the lines in the other movements
(Allegro maestoso and Allegretto) were just beautiful. The artists played with their heart, and the
audience listened with their hearts. As
Gilbert describes it, Ax’s musicianship is natural, and his music unfolds in an
inevitable way.
The Program Notes for both the Mozart piece and the
Bruckner piece talked a lot about things around the music, but not about the
music itself. The write-up on the Mozart
piece looks very similar to (what I remember of) the write-up for the last Mozart
concerto I heard. They were written
within the same general period, anyway – the other one being No. 23. It did talk about a passage that sounded very
much like the theme song of the French Revolution, which is interesting, but
didn’t really add to one’s appreciation of the work.
Bruckner’s third symphony went through revisions similar
to the other symphonies I had heard or read about. His symphonies never seemed to enjoy instant
success, and – the supposedly insecure composer that he was – he would try to
revise them. Well, it looks like I am
not the only person who doesn’t get Bruckner’s work upon its first
hearing. In any case, this work went through
three major revisions, some not even approved by him. In its originally
composed form it evoked so much Wagner that the latter agreed to
have it dedicated to him. Supposedly
Bruckner was most pleased with what we heard tonight, but by this revision most
of the Wagner quotations were gone – except for the end of the second movement
which had a fleeting reference to Die Walkure.
At least that is what I gleamed from the Program Notes,
which I suspect left things a bit ambiguous on purpose, for various
reasons. That is not what I heard,
though. The piece started very quietly,
and to my ears it sounded somewhat like Das Rheingold and The Flying Dutchman.
I took advantage of the “elbow room” I had and took some
notes on the piece. After the Wagnerian
start, the volume quickly built up. As I
observed before, Bruckner had a more classical (meaning traditional) approach
to the symphony, and the way he developed a theme was relatively easy to
catch. The first movement (Mehr langsam,
Misterioso) was quite long at 21 minutes.
During the second movement (Etwas bewegt, quasi Andante; 16 minutes) we
heard a rare and beautiful melody from the viola section. Somewhere along the line it got very complex:
I noticed that each of the string section was further split into two parts. I listened attentively till the end of the
movement and embarrassingly couldn’t hear anything from Die Walkure. (I will be going to the opera in a couple of
weeks; maybe something would jog my memory.)
The third movement (Zielich schnell – Trio) was relatively light-hearted
and lasted a relatively short 8 or so minutes.
The beginning of the fourth movement (Allegro; 15 minutes) reminded me of another
composer and his works: Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Romeo and
Juliet. After a few minutes I noticed
during the supposedly unison passages some instruments would come in a fraction
of a beat late. It happened enough times
that I wonder if it was on purpose; unfortunately it is probably very difficult
to get a copy of the score. There was a
slow cello passage that was also very pleasant, and that was again followed by
a Prokofiev-like passage. (I am writing this fully aware that Prokofiev was
born in 1891, after the last revision to this symphony. Perhaps I should have said “anticipated
Prokofiev.”) The piece ended in a
typical Bruckner manner, loud, with the strings playing tremolos and the
woodwinds and brasses belting out the melody.
The orchestration for the symphony is again quite
traditional, but everyone showed up. I
counted 16 second violins, and the roster has only 13 names. Again the brasses were sometimes on the loud
side, although not nearly as egregious as the last Bruckner.
The symphony was close to one hour in length. To my surprise, I didn’t find it long at all. Actually somewhere along the line I was telling myself that I was enjoying it.
I am glad I went.
The New York Times review was at best lukewarm on the Bruckner piece,
interestingly placing the blame on the ambiguity of the piece due to its many
revisions rather than the conductor. The
reviewer also heard references to many Wagner works which I thought got revised
out of the score – I will go with my lack of perception on this one. He even blamed the Avery Fisher acoustics for
the disjointed performance he heard.
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