David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center. Orchestra (Seat EE03, $58).
End of concert. LA Dance Project dancers in front, and a few groups of musicians on stage. Many light bars were placed in the auditorium for effect. Salonen was wearing a red and a blue glove.
Program
Octet for Wind Instruments (1922-23; rev. 1952) by Stravinsky (1882-1971).
Concerto for Orchestra, BB 123, Sz 116 (1943) by Bartok (1881-1945).
Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna for Orchestra in Eight Groups (1974-75) by Boulez (1925-2016).
LA Dance Project, Benjamin Millepied, choreographer.
Marissa Brown, Courtney Conovan, Daphne Fernberger, Audrey Sides, Hope Spears, Noah Wang
This was the second series marking Boulez's 100th birthday conducted by Salonen. On the program is a 32 or so minute composition by Boulez. As Salonen describes it in the Program Notes, the joint commission (by NY Phil, LA Phil, and l'Orchestre de Paris) was to "add something that would not violate or compromise the music in any way but would give it a new context. We decided to incorporate choreography ... I am absolutely sure that Boulez would have been delighted."
To start with, this is already a complex composition. The term "Eight Groups" means exactly that, there are eight groups of instruments, each group a complement of one or more "lyrical" (or non-percussion) instruments plus one percussionist (two in the case of the eighth group) who plays on an array of percussion instruments. That already sounds complicated enough. If the lyrical instruments don't play in unison (and I am sure they didn't), then they alone can occupy a 40-staff score. Assuming the percussionist do only one instrument at a time, we are easily talking 50 lines going on at the same time. I saw a 29-staff score at Wahnfried, and that was unwieldy enough. The score in front of Salonen certainly didn't look that long. In any case, I wonder if musically it would make any difference if the parts are just written as one score (not sure what terminology to use), one can still achieve a spatial dimension by having musicians placed in different parts of the auditorium. We noticed at lease three placed in the third tier.
Again from the Program Notes, the death of Boulez's fellow composer Bruno Maderna was the catalyst for Boulez composing this work, and it is viewed by many as a "summation of Boulez's sensibilities at that moment." Left unsaid was if Boulez's sensibilities continued to evolve, or they remained pretty much the same for the rest of his composing career - I am assuming sensibilities don't equate to style. The score includes a poem by Boulez to memorialize his friend. It's printed in English in the Program Notes, I wonder if the original was in French. How the imagery evokes "the idea of alternation, of polyphony within space" is beyond me; I guess I have to understand what the words means first.
My usual frustration with modern music is the words used to describe the music is very interesting, but the actual experience of listening never matches what the words say. My usual tendency is to map what I hear into what I know about the work. In this case all I read was the description in the Program Notes, and it provided little guidance; another way of saying I couldn't get the "plot," if there was one. I read the Wikipedia description just now. While it added considerably to my understanding, I doubt very much I would have gotten more if I had read it beforehand. Part of what made it interesting was trying to figure out where the sound came from.
What about the choreography? I do have a few things to say. The group of six young people certainly exhibited a lot of athleticism, and by-and-large didn't cause much distraction due to their presence. One could say, given the nature of the music, a lot had to happen to cause real issues in that regard. (I.e., there was nothing to distract.) I don't know how much practice they put in, but I was impressed they could follow the music. I am assuming the choreography is sync'd to the score, so the dancers needed to know the music well enough to anticipate what was to come along. The ending of the piece was a repetition of a few notes, the dancers helped with - but did not eliminate - the tedium of the repetitions. Indeed, the stagnant end felt very incongruent with the rest of the piece; up till that point the music had a sense of propulsion that moved it along.
I usually take a stroll inside the hall at intermission. Here in the back of the third tier were chairs and stands for additional groups of musicians for the Boulez piece.
The concert began with a short Octet written by Stravinsky. The piece is quite interesting and showcased the technical prowess of the featured wind instrumentalists. The three movements of the octet are Sinfonia, Tema con variazioni - Finale: Tempo giusto. The description of the second movement in the Playbill is quite interesting. The movement starts with the theme and then variation A, but then this variation A becomes a recurrent visitor, resulting in a theme-and-variations rondo. I got lost soon into this movement, so couldn't tell when the different variations came in (up to variation E). The finale followed without a pause.
This octet was composed in 1922, after Firebird and The Rite of Spring. It sounded nothing like the composer's earlier pieces, I wonder if Stravinsky had since moved on to another composition style.
I have encountered Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra a couple of times before, and in reading over my previous blog entries, didn't come away very impressed. One of those times was Salonen conducting the New York Philharmonic. The lady sitting next to us clearly was enjoying the performance, so I assume I could get there if I know the music well enough. Some of that enthusiasm rubbed off on me, which was a good thing. Interestingly last week we also heard a Concerto for Orchestra, by Lutoslawski.
The Octet. Salonen conducted.
After performance of Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra.
What was remarkable was both the Stravinsky and Bartok pieces sounded very approachable. I wonder how much more that would be the case if Boulez was performed first. Speaking of Boulez, the two concerts had a total of a little over 40 minutes of his music in it. Not that I wanted to hear more, but a bit light for the composer's 100th birthday anniversary.
The Program Notes says the Boulez piece has a duration of 26 minutes, but tonight's performance was about 35 minutes long. We couldn't make the 9:38 pm train.
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