Prudential Hall at NJPAC.
Tier 3 (Seat A147, $57).
Program
A Midsummer Night’s
Dream: Overture, Op. 21 by Mendelssohn (1809-1847).
Overture for Violin and Orchestra by Meyer (b. 1960).
Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor, Op. 22 by Wieniawski
(1835-1880).
Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 (Pastorale) by Beethoven (1770-1827).
Chung Shu got several other people interested in this
concert, so there were six of us who attended it together. Our seats, in the first row in Tier 3, were
reasonably close to the stage, and had a good view of it.
Many announcements before a concert at this hall include
something like “if you unwrap a candy in Tier 4, the person sitting in row 6 in
the orchestra section will hear it.” I
have no reason to doubt that, but what they don’t tell you is the sound would
be so muffled that you won’t be able to tell if it is hard or soft candy
(somewhat joking here.) Indeed, we could
hear the music without any problems, but the sound was dampened and lacked the
liveliness one would expect from a live concert.
This orchestra was started by Sir Neville Marriner in the
1950s, and Joshua Bell is its current director.
Despite having a few records with their performance, and our actual
visit to the church (I still remember having coffee in its basement), I had
never seen them perform, so was surprised that they did it without a
conductor. When acting as the “concertmaster,”
Bell would use these rather large gestures to lead the ensemble, sometimes not
playing the first violin lines. And he
would also give the orchestra cues when the solo violin was silent. A bit of a contrast with Orpheus where the
leader doesn’t seem to do as much leading.
It’s also a sizable ensemble. The number of string players is 8, 6, 4, 4, 2
(violin 1 to bass), and there were four French horns, two flutes and a piccolo
(the latter used only a couple of minutes, but the lady sat there during the
entire Pastoral Symphony.)
Chung Shu recognized Edgar Meyer’s name as someone who
used to play double bass for the New York Philharmonic; he is no longer in the
roster. After a bit over a day I
discover I can’t remember any of it, other than it ended with quite a flourish.
My first encounter with the Wieniawski concerto was when
I was around 12. Some prodigy student of my violin teacher won the open violin
competition in Hong Kong with it. He had
to be around 13 at that time. To a
12-year old with only a couple of years of violin lessons that was simply
awesome. It didn’t look simple this
afternoon, and Bell put in one of the better performances I had seen from him
in terms of clarity. There was not my
usual complaint about problems with intonation.
The three movements are: (I) Allegro moderato; (II) Romance; and (III)
Allegro con fuoco – Allegro moderato (a
la zingara).
There was not as much contrast in the Beethoven symphony
as I would like; not sure if that’s the problem of the orchestra or the
aforementioned acoustics. I had enjoyed
most of the prior performances I had listened to, but today I found it a bit
tedious, the motifs seemed overused.
Perhaps someone could produce an abridged version that is 10 minutes
shorter: a heretical statement to fans of Beethoven, I am sure. And I don’t recall ever seeing the movement
markings in German, although I am sure they were originally written in
German. So is the Academy trying to be
true to Beethoven, or is it pretentious?
Joshua Bell after performing Wieniawski's Violin Concerto.
In the Program I found only a bio of Bell and a description
of the orchestra. There were no notes on
any music. Both the concerto and the
symphony had movements played without pause (let me be pretentious: attacca),
and the audience was confused about when to applaud.
Attendance was okay, although there were quite a few
empty seats. This program will be
repeated in Lincoln Center. Using New
Jersey as a warm up for the Big Apple works out well for us as going to
Princeton and Newark is much easier.
We left church at around 1:40 pm, and got back just after
6 pm.
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