Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Play "Body Cosmic" & More at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 27 November 2024 14:51

Written by Jack Angstreich

Ellen Reid with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Photo by Chris Lee

At Carnegie Hall’s wonderful Stern Auditorium on consecutive nights beginning on Friday, November 22nd, I had the exceptional pleasure to attend two magnificent concerts presented by the extraordinary musicians of the celebrated Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, under the brilliant direction of the Klaus Mäkelä, whose rise internationally has been understandably meteoric.

The first evening started splendidly with a marvelous realization of Ellen Reid’s excellent, admirably orchestrated Body Cosmic, which was co-commissioned by this venue and which received its U.S. premiere with this performance. The composer has usefully commented on the work: 

Body Cosmic is a meditation on the human body as it creates life and gives birth. The first movement, Awe | she forms herself, unspools a melody against the pulse of an ostinato, reflecting the surreality of creating new life, so common and yet so astonishing. Dissonance | her light and its shadow explores the conundrum of bringing new life into the simultaneously beautiful and crumbling world, moving between big splashes of smearing brass and tumultuous percussion and moments of warmth and blazing beauty.

This piece was written in response to my own experience with pregnancy and childbirth, a period of time that coincided with my dual residency at the Concertgebouw concert hall and with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Spending time in Amsterdam, working in the Concertgebouw’s storied halls, activated over 140 years of music making, is a looming presence in this work. Thank you to the incredible musicians of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, whose generous artistic contributions rang loudly in my mind’s ear as I wrote this piece. 

Afterwards, Reid ascended to the stage to receive the audience’s acclaim.

The renowned soloist Lisa Batiashvili then joined the artists to expertly play Sergei Prokofiev’s terrific Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 63, from 1935, in which the elegant ethos and sensibility of the composer’s scores from that period—like that for his incredible ballet of Romeo and Juliet—is discernible. Prokofiev provided some enlightening background on the work:

In 1935, a group of admirers of the French violinist [Robert] Soetens asked me to write a violin concerto for him, giving him exclusive rights to perform it for one year. I readily agreed, since I had been intending to write something for the violin at that time and had accumulated some material. As in the case of the preceding concertos, I began by searching for an original title for the piece, such as “Concert Sonata for Violin and Orchestra,” but finally returned to the simplest solution: Concerto No. 2. Nevertheless, I wanted it to be altogether different from No. 1 both as to music and style.

The variety of places in which [the Second Violin Concerto] was written is a reflection of the nomadic concert-tour existence I led at that time: The principal theme of the first movement was written in Paris, the first theme of the second movement in Voronezh, the orchestration I completed in Baku, while the first performance was given in Madrid in December 1935.

The violin begins the initial, Allegro moderato movement soulfully, quickly echoed by the ensemble, but the music soon becomes lively—its lyricism is tempered with astringency—and the movement closes abruptly. The ensuing Andante assai is enchanting—and is the loveliest of the movements—although again the composer’s irony is apparent. The Allegro ben marcato finale is more overtly comic in inspiration, but with some darker undercurrents, and ends forcefully. Enthusiastic applause elicited an exquisite encore from the musicians, including Batiashvili: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chorale Prelude on "Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ" (arranged for Violin and Strings by Anders Hillborg).

The second half of the concert was possibly even stronger: a stunning account of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s glorious Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 27. In his fine notes for the program, Jack Sullivan educatively reports on the circumstances under which the piece was created: “He resigned from his position as conductor of the Imperial Grand Opera in Moscow, as well as from piano engagements, and moved to Dresden for two years to devote himself exclusively to composition.” He adds: “Freed from distractions and buoyed by an apparently happy marriage, Rachmaninoff completed his Second Symphony, conducting the successful premiere in St. Petersburg in 1908; during his first American tour in 1909, he conducted the work with The Philadelphia Orchestra, with whom he later premiered his Symphonic Dances.”

The first movement’s Largo introduction is somewhat lugubrious but also has a dreamy quality; the Allegro moderato main body is at times spirited but much of it is solemn—it builds to a brief climax. In the Allegro molto that follows there is some urgency that intensifies later and the movement concludes suddenly. The succeeding Adagio features a famous melody that is rapturously beautiful—the movement could scarcely be overpraised—while the Allegro vivace finale is often exuberant but with moody passages—it concludes powerfully and affirmatively. A standing ovation was rewarded with another delightful encore: the "Hopak" from Modest Mussorgsky’s Sorochintsï Fair (arranged by Anatoly Liadov).

The second concert was at least comparably memorable, beginning with a superlative version of Arnold Schoenberg’s 1943 revision of his Verklärte Nacht, which I’ve written elsewhere is “one of the masterpieces of late Romanticism.” Sullivan offers a valuable summary:

Verklärte Nacht was originally written for chamber ensemble and expanded for string orchestra in 1917. The narrative behind the notes, based on a poem from Richard Dehmel’s Weib und Welt (Woman and World), depicts two lovers in a moonlit forest. In anxiety and remorse, the woman confesses that she is pregnant by a previous lover; though she fears her current lover’s reaction, she hopes that motherhood will at least instill a purpose in life. The man’s reaction is unexpected: The beauty of the forest inspires him to rise to the occasion and proclaim that love will unite them and make the child genuinely their own. At the end, he embraces her and they continue their nocturnal walk.

Even more remarkable was the second half of the evening: an enthralling rendition of Gustav Mahler’s awesome Symphony No. 1 in D Major—is any composer’s first symphony greater than this one? Schoenberg himself has said about it:

“Everything that will characterize him is already present … Here already his life-melody begins, and he merely develops it. Here are his devotions to nature and his thoughts of death.”

About the work’s 1889 premiere, Sullivan records that:

Mahler provided a detailed program for this version of the piece. In addition to the “Titan” subtitle (after a Jean Paul novel) for the entire symphony, the first movement was called “Spring Without End” (the long pedal introduction evoking “the awakening of nature at early dawn”), the second “Under Full Sail,” the third “Funeral March in the Manner of Callot,” and the finale “From Inferno to Paradise.” Mahler also included another movement called “Blumine,” but later suppressed it. In addition, the symphony was divided into two parts, “From the Days of Youth” and “The Human Comedy.”

The initial movement opens softly, even mysteriously, with an extended introduction preceding lovely, joyous, pastoral music, a mood that is sustained and elaborated throughout it. The subsequent movement is mainly comprised of an effervescent, vigorous Ländler; its Trio is also dance-like, if more serene. The haunting third movement—which was inspired by Moritz von Schwind’s satirical 1850 woodcut, The Huntsman’s Funeral—features an adaptation—in “gloomy and uncanny colors” according to the composer—of the children’s song, “Frère Jacques,” as a funeral march that is more than once interrupted by sardonic Klezmer music; the movement closes very quietly. The finale, which starts with extreme force in what Mahler called a “sudden outburst of a deeply wounded heart,” is more agitated than the other movements although there are numerous subdued—indeed even diffuse and inchoate—passages, but it ultimately acquires an exultant and heroic character—punctuated by exhilarating fanfares—and an accelerating forward momentum that achieves a thrilling climax. The artists were again—deservedly—enthusiastically acclaimed by the audience.

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