State Theatre,
New Brunswick. Front Orchestra (Seat
L107, $43).
Program
On the Town:
Three Dance Episodes (1944) by Bernstein (1918-1990).
The Four Seasons
of Buenos Aires (1965-70, arr. 1992) by Piazzolla (1921-1992).
Tzigane (1924)
by Ravel (1875-1937).
Rodeo: Four
Dance Episodes (1942) by Copland (1900-1990).
After purchasing
the NJSO Red Bank series, I never gave the rest of their season any
thought. Earlier this week I got a
mailing advertising a sale for their opening weekend concerts. $40 (plus $3 handling) got us a ticket front
and center.
The program
consisted of works that all drew heavily on the “common folk.” On the Town originated as the ballet Fancy
Free describing three sailors’ shore leave in New York. It was eventually
turned into the Broadway show On the Town.
The three vignettes performed tonight had the self-explanatory titles of
The Great Lover, Lonely Town: Pas de Deux and Times Square, 1944. The other American composition that bookended
the concert was originally a ballet describing the love interests of a
cowgirl. The ballet consists of five
sections: Buckaroo Holiday, Ranch House Party, Corral Nocturne, Saturday Night
Waltz, and Hoe-Down. The orchestral
suite omits Ranch House Party. While the
two compositions were written within two years of each other, they showed
rather different characteristics.
Simplistically, Bernstein’s was jazzy and Copland’s was more “square
dance” country. Anne told me listeners
of WQXR would be very familiar with Hoe-Down as it is used often as lead-ins
and fade-outs.
Both pieces were
enjoyable. Perhaps to emphasize the
jazzy nature of Bernstein’s work, the conductor was sometimes more like a band
leader, saying “one-two-three-four” before the third movement.
In the middle
part of the program there were two pieces that also had strong national
flavors: Piazzolla’s Argentinian and Ravel’s Eastern European. Of course Ravel wasn’t Romany, but he was
inspired by the Hungarian violinst Jelly d’Aranyi (playing in London, of all
places) to write Tzigane.
Piazzolla was
brought up in New York, and didn’t attempt to incorporate tango characteristics
into his music until later in life. The
Four Seasons has both Latin characteristics as well as references to Vivaldi in
each of its movements. The arrangement
for violin and string orchestra was commissioned by Gidon Kremer in 1992 after
Piazzolla’s death, although the Program Notes reassures us that Piazzolla won’t
mind. The pieces didn’t originate as a
group, and weren’t considered by Piazzolla as a complete cycle. If I remember correctly, Vivaldi didn’t start
out to compose a suite called Four Seasons either.
We heard New
York Philharmonic’s Frank Huang perform a couple of the movements last summer
at Snug Harbor (same arrangement), and another by the Prima Ensemable in Princeton. Interestingly they
didn’t seem as technically challenging as what we heard today. Perhaps Huang made it look easy, or (more
likely) perhaps today we were seated front and center. And for some reason the quotes from Vivaldi
were much more evident. Tonight's performance
wasn’t without its flaws: there were occasional intonation problems with
g-string high notes, and the orchestra overwhelmed Chang at times. However, both the musicians and the audience
enjoyed it. The orchestra parts weren’t
pieces of cake either, with some challenging solo passages for the principals;
they all did their job superbly.
Curtain call after Piazzolla’s Four Seasons.
It was quite a
few years ago when we heard Tzigane played by Vadim Repin in Alice Tully Hall,
and more recently by Stefan Jackiw at Count Basie. Each performance had its share of
difficulties. Chang certainly tackled them
better, although not always with ease.
(Again the intonation problems.)
After Ravel’s Tzigane. Indeed Sarah Chang changed her dress.
From how her
violin sounded, it appeared Chang wasn’t using a Stradivarius. Indeed, a web search confirms that she uses a
Guarnerius. The richer timbre may work
with the low notes, but the brilliance and clarity of a Stradivarius would be
more suited for a concert hall performance.
She still swung the bow and kicked, but much less than she used to, if
memory serves.
This is the
opening weekend for the 2016-2017 season, and one has to say the programming is
a bit puzzling. While each of the pieces
has an interesting story behind it, none of them is particularly intellectually
demanding.
Not that there
is anything wrong with Teddy Abrams, but why this conductor, who seems to have
no history with NJSO, for the opening concert, no less. One explanation for both the program and
musician choices could be they were put together during the “transition period”
between conductors. Abrams conducted
with gusto, but some of his exaggerated movements didn’t quite elicit
corresponding strong statements from the orchestra. He was the first conductor I saw who wore
jeans on the podium.
He did talk a bit about the program, and I incorporated some of his remarks into this writeup.
It was a bit
disappointing to see the large number of empty seats in the auditorium. If it bothered the artists, they didn’t let
it show.
We didn’t leave
the house until about 6:45 pm as Anne had “Middletown Day” duties the whole
day, but got to New Brunswick early enough that I could circle around the block
(many blocks in fact) to find parking.
It was even more straightforward to return home.
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