State Theatre New Jersey, New Brunswick. Front Orchestra (Seat J101, $15).
Program: Winter Festival – America, Inspiring
Thunderbolt P-47 (1945) by Martinu (1890-1959).
Piano Concerto in G Major (1929-31) by Ravel (1875-1937).
Symphonic Dances, Op. 45 (1940) by Rachmaninoff
(1873-1943).
I got these tickets at $15 each during the Black Friday
Special sale. We returned from Hong Kong
a couple of days ago, and I wasn’t sure how the evening would turn out. It went fine.
The Thunderbolt P-47 was a workhorse fighter plane used
during the second World War by British, French and American air forces. It was the result of a (small) commission
Bohuslav Martinu wrote “in praise of speed.”
Indeed the composition was one continuous pulsating piece made more urgent
by the syncopation used throughout the orchestra. I noticed only a couple of times when the
violins took a rest. (We were seated in
the 10th row, on the left, so the first violins were very much in
our line of sight.) It was quite a feat
the orchestra pulled to be as precise as it was. This was the NJSO premiere, and my first time
listening to it. While there was a sense
of urgency in the music, I thought it could have used a bit more contrast (pilots
flying loops, bombing runs, or whatever fighter planes do.)
The Thunderbolt P-47.
I attributed my appreciation of Ravel’s piano concerto to
a performance I saw by Yuja Wang. That
was in October, 2016. While now I can pick up the major aspects of the piece (the
beginning that could pass as Gershwin’s work, for example,) I still have a lot
to learn. The NJSO website quotes Ravel
as saying about the concerto: “What is being written today without the
influence of jazz? It is not the only influence, however; in the concerto one
also finds bass accompaniments from the time of Bach, and a melody that recalls
Mozart, the Mozart of the Clarinet Quintet, which by the way is the most
beautiful piece he wrote.”
Tonight’s performance was good, but certainly not at that
level.
For starters, the piano was at times overwhelmed by the
orchestra. Perhaps our seat’s acoustics
had something to do with it, even though they gave us a good view of the
pianist’s actions. So it was particularly
frustrating when I saw his fingers running across the keyboard but could only
barely make out the glissando. The
Program Notes says the score specifies 32 string, but we had the full orchestra
on for tonight, what gives? There were times (such as in the third movement)
when the hand and finger movements were as interesting as the music itself, though. The disappoint was the second movement which
instead of sounding ethereal was more like something the soloist and orchestra
simply wanted to get over with.
Terrence Wilson and Andrew Constantine.
Wilson is a local person (lives in Montclair) and a
graduate of Julliard.
After the intermission, the British-born Constantine
talked a little about the program, in a light-hearted way. He added quite a bit to the structure of the
Rachmaninoff piece than was in the Program Notes. For example, he described how the four
entrances represented four people coming on stage, with the last one starting a
bit off. And that the oboe and clarinet
duet represents two people left on stage, with the alto saxophone looking
on. In addition to the Dies Irae that
Rachmaninoff loved to incorporate in his music, the composer also incorporated
a theme from his first symphony, the one that famously flopped at the premiere.
I got the Dies Irae, which underwent a lot of
embellishment in this work. I think I
got the four entrances and the oboe/clarinet duet. I didn’t get the first symphony reference as
I probably had never heard it.
The piece was completed in 1940, three years before
Rachmaninoff passed away. Nonetheless it
was his last completed work. The three
movements are (i) Non allegro; (ii) Andante con moto (Tempo di valse), and
(iii) Lento assai – Allegro vivace. The
character of this piece is quite different from his more familiar works: less
brunt athleticism and more nuanced.
Why “America, Inspiring?”
Each piece had something to do with America. Martinu’s piece was commissioned by Hans
Kindler of the National Symphony.
Martinue lived in the US for 12 years, and was for three years chair of
the composition department at Princeton.
Ravel’s work was influenced by the jazz music he heard while traveling
around the US. Rachmaninoff wrote the
Symphonic Dances in Huntington, Long Island.
Certainly American enough.
The concert was poorly attended, with huge sections
empty. I appreciate the artists ability
to not that disturb them (at least on the outside.)
New Brunswick is easy for us to get to. We were home before 10:30 pm.
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