Count Basie Theatre, Red Bank, NJ, Center Rear Orchestra
(Seat T115, $29.)
Program
Varsang (Spring Song), Op. 16 (1894, rev. 1895, 1902) by
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957).
Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16 (1869, rev. 1872, 1895,
1907) by Edvard Grieg (1843-1907).
Symphony No. 8 in G Major, Op. 88 (1890) by Dvorak
(1841-1904).
There is the term “new normal” used by financial
reporters to describe the current financial markets. After my last attendance at an NJSO event I was
hoping they had arrived at their own “new normal,” only in this case that they
have made great improvements as an orchestra.
To that end I bought concerts to several concerts this season when they
were on sale. Certainly $29 for a live
concert (and our seat was quite good) is a great bargain.
Alas, tonight we saw the “same old” orchestra performing a
“same old” concert. Not that there was
anything overtly wrong, it was just a flat and uninspired performance. And that description applies to all three
pieces on the program tonight.
The program began with a short piece by Sibelius written
early in his career. Per the Program
Notes at that time of his career Sibelius used Nordic themes instead of Finnish
themes. Someone well versed in music of
Sibelius will be able to confirm this. I
am sure many people are, but I am not one of them. Other than being uncharacteristically sunny,
it sounded consistent enough with what I understand to be Sibelius’s music, so
it is all good.
Appropriately enough, the conductor is Finnish, and seems
to be quite young. He conducts with
exaggerated gestures but can’t quite get the orchestra to sync up its dynamics
with his. I was beginning to put the
NJSO in the same league as NY Philharmonic; today things came back down to
earth – I thought the performance was more like a high school orchestra (a
great one, let’s say.)
Grieg’s piano concerto when played well is dramatic and
can grip the audience for its entire 30 or so minutes. In this instance, Yang certainly impressed
with the opening chords. Hope for a
great performance was soon dashed. I
never thought I would ever wish for more use of the pedal during a performance,
but that is what I kept hoping during the first two movements. They just sounded disjoint. There were flashes of virtuosity here or
there, but there is not attempt at weaving a story together. To be fair, I think the pianist found her
pedaling foot in the third movement, and it sounded much better.
The pianist was raised in Northeast China, and is now
getting her master’s degree at the Julliard.
She looks very young in the Program Notes photo.
If you don’t succeed, get up and try again. So I got myself psyched up to expect a
pleasant Dvorak symphony to provide a memorable experience. This is Dvorak’s most popular symphony, after
the ninth, after all. That wasn’t to
be. We just had a flat rendition of the
score dotted by a nice melody here and there (I especially enjoyed the trumpet
and the English horn.) The quiet
passages, rather than being anticipatory, just dragged on. That didn’t seem to bother our conductor as
he continued to lead with the same level of gusto as he did at the beginning. The term “comical incongruence” came to mind.
There was some discussion in the Program that some called
this symphony “English” because it was played when Dvorak got his honorary
doctorate at Cambridge (it was premiered in Prague.) Interesting, Bach English suites have little
to do with the English either. The other
association is “pastoral” which certainly fits quite well.
Going over my prior blogs, it seems I haven’t had much
luck with this particular symphony. I
last heard it performed by New York Philharmonic, conducted by Joshua
Weilerstein. My remark about that
concert was “The youth shall take over the world” but the old “needn’t be that
worried …” Similar sentiment obtains
here, a little more so, I am afraid.
(Ironically this puts the two orchestras in the same league.)
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