Mayo Performing Arts Center, Morristown, NJ. Orchestra (Seat U5, $59.)
Program
The School for
Scandal Overture (1931) by Barber (1910-1981).
Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61 (1806) by Beethoven
(1770-1827).
Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, “Organ,” Op. 78 (1886) by Saint-Saens
(1835-1921).
MPAC is one of the venues where NJSO performs, this would
be our first attendance at this location.
The auditorium started as a movie theater, built in the 1930s, and was
converted to a concert hall in the 80s.
It seats about 1300 people. Today’s
concert was better attended than a typical Red Bank concert. Nonetheless, our row was quite empty, and we
moved to U1 and U3.
Program describes the Barber piece as one of the rare
Barber “zesty and animated” compositions.
The piece was written by Barber as his graduation exercise from Curtis,
and was inspired by a satire of the same name by Robert Brinsley Sheridan. For today, the piece’s main functions are to
get the orchestra settled, and to give late-comers a chance to get seated. Nonetheless, it was a delightful piece that
was easy to like, and the orchestra sounded very good.
The narrow stage could only accommodate three pairs of
first violins in the front row to make way for the soloist. However, it was deep enough that the full
orchestra fit comfortably on it. Perhaps
misreading the distance to the auditorium, the initial notes struck by the
timpani were quite tepid. As the long
introduction progressed, it became the take shape Beethoven concerto that I
expected to hear.
Zukerman’s Guarneri was well-suited for the intimate
setting today. Today’s performance was
more warm- than brilliant-sounding, which was a pleasant change of pace. Zukerman overall put in an excellent
performance, but one with considerable flaws.
The most obvious problem is intonation. I didn’t notice that with last week’s
performance, but today there were quite a few places where he failed to hit the
precise note. There was one place that
he couldn’t get the note to come out at all (I think it was a harmonic E.) To his credit, he didn’t let that bother him,
not in a noticeable way anyway.
To me the beautify of Beethoven is how he managed to make
dramatic music with a highly structured composition of mostly scales and
arpeggios. There doesn’t need to be a
lot of exaggerated playing for the story to come out. This was the only performance I remember
where there was a lot of drama. While it
didn’t necessary make it a bad performance, in my book it didn’t improve it
either.
The piece was in general taken a bit too fast, especially
the second movement, which I prefer to be much more meditative.
The fact that Zukerman managed some of the more difficult
passages with ease would indicate the skills are still there. Perhaps as one ages, being able to hear a
pitch is different from being able to deliver it, and there might be an
occasional lapse in concentration.
Despite these misgivings, I definitely would pay to hear
Zukerman perform again. Nowadays he brings
a musicality accumulated over many years, which I appreciate.
Zukerman and Vasquez after Beethoven's Violin Concerto.
While I don’t recall having heard the entire Saint-Saens
symphony before, many of the tunes sounded very familiar. The Symphony is organized into two parts:
Adagio-Allegro moderato-Poco adagio, and Allegro
moderato-Presto-Maestoso-Allegro. As the
Programs Notes says, the start of the symphony hints of Dies Irae (frankly I
wouldn’t have heard it without the suggestion), and the addition of the organ
and piano makes for an interesting solemn and whimsical effect
respectively. Some of the passages with
the piano sounded like they were lifted from Carnival of Animals.
Saint-Saens evidently led a rather charmed life, and was
very popular during his lifetime. With
works like the Organ symphony, is there any doubt.
Today’s performance did a lot to assuage my worry that the
NJSO standard has slipped a lot, which is a good thing.
This was the second of three programs curated by
Zukerman, we won’t be able to attend the one next week due to our travels.
Christian Vasquez is a young Venezuelan conductor, and
did both the Barber and Saint-Saens pieces without music. He was faithful in keeping the beat, and yet
managed to elicit good sounds and great precision from the orchestra.
We had tickets to the Princeton performance of this concert
but couldn’t make it because of a last-minute decision to go to Boston for our
granddaughter’s fourth birthday. Swapping
them to this concert was a breeze, and cost all of $5. The drive both ways was easy. We had dinner at The Cottage a couple of
blocks away from MPAC before we drove back home.
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