A Melodic Evening with The Knights at Zankel Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 21 November 2024 15:31

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Jennifer Taylor

At Zankel Hall on the night of Thursday, October 24th, I had the considerable pleasure of attending an excellent concert presented by the orchestral ensemble, The Knights, conducted by Artistic Director Eric Jacobsen.

The event began enjoyably with a performance of George Gershwin’s perennially popular Rhapsody in Blue, from 1924, featuring pianist Aaron Diehl, in an arrangement by Michael P. Atkinson. In a useful program note by Jack Sullivan, he provides some interesting background on the piece’s genesis:

Gershwin didn’t know he was writing Rhapsody in Blue until he read about it in the paper. The New York Tribune proclaimed that Gershwin was composing a jazz concerto for an “Experiment in Modern Music” organized by the popular Paul Whiteman dance band. Although he had not agreed to anything of the kind (though he vaguely recalled speaking with Whiteman about a concerto), Gershwin decided to compose the work anyway, despite having basically a month to write it.

About it, the composer said, “I tried to express our manner of living, the tempo of our modern life with its speed and chaos and vitality,” elsewhere describing it as “a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America—of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness.”

Even more impressive was a confident account of Ludwig van Beethoven’s marvelous, underappreciated Symphony No. 4 in B-flat Major, Op. 60–from 1806–which Robert Schumann compared to a “slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants,” while Sir George Grove analogized its movements to “the limbs and features of a lovely statue; and, full of fire and invention as they are, all is subordinated to conciseness, grace, and beauty.” Sullivan records that:

Beethoven wrote the Fourth in 1806 during a happy spring and summer spent as a houseguest in the castle of Count Franz von Oppersdorff, to whom it is dedicated. Beethoven premiered it in 1807 at a private concert in Vienna alongside the first performance of the Fourth Piano Concerto.

The initial movement’s Adagio introduction is quiet and lugubrious, but the main body of the movement, marked Allegro vivace, is ebullient, indeed irrepressible, with an almost pastoral, even Mozartean, character. Hector Berlioz observed that its second crescendo is “one of the most skillfully conceived effects we know of in all music.” The Adagio movement that follows is graceful and dance-like with lyrical moments, concluding with surprising force. About this movement, the critic Richard Gilman stated that it is “unmatched in Beethoven’s scores,” while Berlioz asserted that it “eludes analysis,” adding:

Its form is so pure and the expression of its melody so angelic and of such irresistible tenderness that the prodigious art by which this perfection is attained disappears completely. From the very first bars we are overtaken by an emotion which, toward the close, becomes overpowering in its intensity … Only among the giants of poetry can we find anything to compare with this sublime page of the giant of music.

The ensuing Scherzo, another Allegro vivace, is exuberant, with subdued passages; Berlioz commented that its march-like and joyous Trio sections have a “delicious freshness.” The Allegro ma non troppo finale is effervescent and melodious but with darker passages; Berlioz called it “one animated swarm of sparkling notes” interrupted by “the angry introspections which we have already had occasion to mention as peculiar to this composer.”

The second half of the evening was also memorable beginning with the world premiere of Atkinson’s exquisite arrangement of a Suite from Book of Ways by the celebrated jazz pianist, Keith Jarrett, featuring Diehl on harpsichord. I reproduce the arranger’s note on the work:

Keith Jarrett is an American pianist, composer, and improviser. He is well known across the globe through an extensive recording catalog spanning nearly 50 years and more than 100 albums. His 1975 album The Köln Concertremains the best-selling solo piano record of all time.

Book of Ways was recorded for ECM on July 14, 1986, in Ludwigsburg, Germany. Jarrett reflected on the process:

“We had three clavichords in the studio, two of which were angled together so that I could play them both simultaneously, and the third off to the side. Also we miked the instruments very closely so that the full range of dynamics could be used (clavichords are very quiet and cannot be heard more than a few feet away). […] No material was organized beforehand. Everything was spontaneous. The recording was done in four hours.”

The result is an impressive series of 19 separate improvisations totaling 100 minutes. Jarrett takes the clavichords through a vast range of styles, ranging from Neo-Baroque to avant-garde. He creates totally unique resonances and techniques within complex polyphonic musical structures, many of which have symphonic qualities, which is what sparked my interest as an arranger.

Three of these improvisations are presented here in a concerto grosso setting, with the harpsichord playing a continuo-like role in the outer movements, and primary soloist in the middle movement.

The first movement, entitled “4,” has a sprightly quality and is reminiscent of Aaron Copland, while the second, “14,” is more reflective; the last movement, “15,” is evocative of the music of Maurice Ravel and builds in intensity.

The concert ended splendidly with another world premiere: Michael Schachter’s Being and Becoming, Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra—co-commissioned by this ensemble with Carnegie Hall and Pro Musica, in honor of the centennial of Rhapsody in Blue—with Diehl again as soloist. Below is the program note of the composer, who introduced the performance, which is distinctive for its range of moods:

In my rhapsody, I set out not to create a pastiche of Gershwin’s New York, but rather to take the context of his rhapsodic project as impetus to reckon with the here and now, availing myself of the embarrassment of riches in working with The Knights and Aaron Diehl, collaborators as fearless and generous as one could dream up.

Through these priorities and more, my piece came to life as a proper, old-school rhapsody, an extension of a through-line from Liszt through Bartók and Gershwin to the Beatles, Queen, and Radiohead: a single-movement work, tuneful and vernacular, moving more by the hot thrill of impulse than the cool logic of austere design.

Across the escalation of themes and grooves, the piano and orchestra examine what it means to make acoustic music—vibrations, bodies, resonance in a space together—in the digital age, with the internet dissolving time- and place-based locality, the history of the world’s music in our pockets, and the rise of social media / short-form “content” evoking a pendulum swing back to the variety show of the vaudeville/silent era. And in loving rebuke to Gershwin, who spoke of freeing the rhapsody from “cling[ing] to dance rhythms,” encouraging piano and orchestra to embrace the ecstatic flow state that only arises through the deep embrace of rhythmic pocket and dance.

The title Being and Becoming refers not only to the kaleidoscopic form of the rhapsody, but more broadly to the inescapable interplay between presence and transience. In a sense, each of us is a collective—a partnership of particles and spirit, held together in that dynamic combination of consistency and change that we call the self, experiencing an impulsive, episodic assortment of infinite present moments, until we eventually dissipate and return to the source.

We know little. But we do know that we are here, together, now. Being, and becoming.

This piece is dedicated to Aaron Diehl for his artistry and grace; Faina and Aaron Kofman for dooming me to a life in music; my parents, the original “B&B” for everything I am; and Allie, Ronan, and Elliott for everything I have and will become.

The artists deservedly received an enthusiastic ovation.

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