Count Basie Center, Red Bank, NJ. Orchestra Center (Seat G101, $55).
Soloist Elliott acknowledging the orchestra, with conductor Young looking on.
Program
Snapshots by Jessie Montgomery.
Cello Concerto in A Minor, Op. 129 by R. Schumann.
Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36, "Enigma" by Elgar.
The draw of the concert, for me, is the Schumann Cello concerto. About ten days prior we heard the piano concerto performed by Trifonov. Today's Program Notes isn't as "educational" as the writeup in NY Phil's Playbill, but the music is equally fascinating. Instead of taking years to write the piano concerto, Schumann took all of two weeks to do it for the cello; it was written in 1850, a few years later.
It's a lovely concerto. Again I am more familiar with it than I thought. The young soloist is a recent Avery Fisher Prize winner. He is from a musical family, and was brought up with a jazz and blue-grass background. For an encore he played "Julie-O" by Mark Summer (I heard Julio by Mark Sumner, a search using that term returned some videos that sounded like the encore).
Who am I to haggle with Avery Fisher Price judges, but I did think the performance was missing a coherent story line. It is still amazing how one could still get a accurate pitch jumping around the fingerboard, though. And Schumann seemed to use every note available to the cello.
The movements of the concerto are Nicht zu schnell, Langsam, and Sehr lebhaft.
Despite all the writeups extolling the virtues of the "Enigma" variations, it remains an enigma to me. Not so much what specific people Elgar had in mind for the specific variations, but something quite fundamental: how each variation deals with the theme. I am embarrassed to say by the time we got to the finale, I couldn't tell how similar it was to the original theme. Perhaps next time I will read up on the music (rather the story) and look at the score.
Tonight's program began with Montgomery's Snapshots, a work commissioned by several orchestras, including the NJ Symphony. The movements are all marked by tempo markings, but the music didn't feel rigid at all. Montgomery had a brief description of each of the vignettes, and as quoted in the Program Notes, "Each movement [is] distinct in character and based on an imagined scene, mood or effect." The movements are described as boisterous (I, Quarter note = 168), whimsical and playful, a passing storm that never quite quits (II & III. Lively: quarter note - 132; Meandering: quarter note = 60), and being influenced by film music and Ravel and Debussy string quartets (IV: Con fuoco: quarter note = 112). Multiple listenings may get a listener to appreciate what she was saying, but I wouldn't even want to try with a first-listen.
The conductor Joseph Young has several concurrent assignments, one being the resident conductor of the National Youth Orchestra-USA at Carnegie Hall.
Our grandchildren were staying with us this evening. I left the house a little before 7 pm to get a discounted ticket for the 8 pm concert. This concert was poorly attended, the auditorium was perhaps 1/3 full.
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