Opening Night Gala at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 04 October 2022 21:54

Written by Jack Angstreich

Pianist Daniil Trifonov and Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Photo by Chris Lee

On the evening of Thursday, September 29th, I had the privilege to attend Carnegie Hall’s magnificent Opening Night Gala concert with the superb musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra under the outstanding direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

The event began marvelously, with an exhilarating version of Maurice Ravel’s astonishing La Valse, which was notable for the conductor’s mastery in eliciting the remarkable diversity of moods in the work. Christopher H. Gibbs, in his excellent program note, provides some very interesting background:

Maurice Ravel composed La valse in the wake of the First World War, after a period of military service, poor health, compositional inactivity, and the death of his beloved mother. Ideas for the work dated back to 1906, when he initially planned to call it Wien (Vienna), an homage to the music of the “Waltz King,” Johann Strauss II. 

In 1919, the great impresario Sergei Diaghilev, for whom he had composed Daphnis et Chloé (1909–1912), expressed interest in a new piece for his legendary Ballets Russes. Ravel played through La valse for him in a keyboard version. Igor Stravinsky and Francis Poulenc were present and, according to the latter, Diaghilev responded, “Ravel, it is a masterpiece … but it’s not a ballet. It’s a portrait of a ballet … a painting of a ballet.” The composer was deeply offended, and the incident caused a permanent breach. 

As with some of his earlier orchestral works, Ravel composed versions of La Valse for solo piano as well as for two pianos. In October 1920, together with Italian composer Alfredo Casella, Ravel presented the premiere of the work in the two-piano version in Vienna at a special concert given by Arnold Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances. The first orchestral performance took place in Paris seven weeks later. As a work originally planned as a ballet, and that carries the subtitle “choreographic poem,” Ravel was eager to have it staged, especially after Diaghilev’s rejection. The first choreographed version was presented in Antwerp with the Royal Flemish Ballet in 1926, and two years later Ida Rubinstein danced it in Paris. Noted choreographers, including George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton, have used the music as well.

In an autobiographical sketch Ravel stated what he had in mind when he wrote La valse: “Eddying clouds allow glimpses of waltzing couples. The clouds gradually disperse, revealing a vast hall filled with a whirling throng. The scene grows progressively brighter. The light of chandeliers blazes out: an imperial court around 1855.” Elsewhere he remarked that he “conceived this work as a sort of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, mingled with, in my mind, the impression of a fantastic, fatal whirling.” Others have heard the piece more as apocalypse than apotheosis, such as the distinguished historian Carl Schorske, who called it a celebration of “the destruction of the world of the waltz.”

The celebrated virtuoso, Daniil Trifonov, then entered the stage as soloist for a revelatory account of Franz Liszt’s engaging Piano Concerto No. 1–the most impressive realization of this piece I have yet heard. Gibbs and Paul J. Horsley, in another fine program note, comment as follows:

Liszt’s responsibilities in Weimar as conductor of the orchestra made continual demands for fresh orchestral music, and this must have prompted him to look back to his concerto sketches once again. Progress was slow. Having composed chiefly virtuosic solo piano music up to this time, he at first lacked confidence in writing for orchestra. Liszt employed the assistance of Joachim Raff (1822–1882), a composer and excellent orchestrator, with whose help he completed a first version of the E-flat–Major Concerto in 1849. Shortly after this he began composing a series of symphonic poems in which he quickly mastered a delicate but rich orchestral palette. With renewed confidence he revised the First Concerto again in 1853. The successful premiere took place in Weimar in February 1855, with the composer at the piano and no less than his friend Hector Berlioz conducting.

Despite the admiring reception accorded these two celebrated musicians at the first performance, the concerto faced a much less sympathetic response when heard in Vienna the following season. Eduard Hanslick, the powerful anti-Wagnerian critic, called the piece a “triangle concerto” because of the prominent role the instrument plays in the second half of the piece. His views were enough to banish the work from Vienna for some years to come.

Liszt defended what he had done in an amusing letter: 

As regards the triangle, I do not deny that it may give offense, especially if it is struck too strongly and not precisely. A preconceived disinclination and objection to percussion instruments prevails, somewhat justified by the frequent misuse of them ... Of Berlioz, Wagner, and my humble self it is no wonder that ‘like is drawn to like,’ and, as we are all three treated as impotent canaille [rabble] among musicians, it is quite natural that we should be on good terms with the canaille among the instruments … In the face of the most wise proscription of the learned critics I shall, however, continue to employ instruments of percussion and think I shall yet win for them some effects little known.

The concerto is cast in several fluidly interwoven movements that are played in a seamlessly continuous gesture. Allegedly, Liszt fitted the loud opening motif (Allegro maestoso), scored for full strings to which the woodwinds and brass respond, with these humorous words: Das versteht ihr alle nicht, ha-ha! (This none of you understand, ha-ha!). Just after comes an extended virtuoso passage for the soloist; the first movement builds to a furious climax before giving way to a tranquil second movement (Quasi adagio), with a theme in low muted strings. Into this is interpolated an animated scherzo-like section (Allegro animato), as well as the infamous emergence of the triangle. The finale begins with a lively Allegro marziale animato and gradually draws the themes together into an organic synthesis.

In this concerto, one of his first large-scale orchestral compositions, Liszt tried to achieve the kind of unity he so admired in Schubert’s “Wanderer Fantasy.” As he remarked in a letter concerning the last movement, it “is only an urgent recapitulation of the earlier material with quickened, livelier rhythm, and it contains no new motifs, as will be clear to you from a glance through the score. This kind of binding together and rounding off a piece at its close is somewhat my own, but it is quite organic and justified from the standpoint of musical form.” 

Enthusiastic applause was rewarded with a beautiful encore from the pianist: an exquisite reading of Johann Sebastian Bach’s exalting “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”

Also felicitous was a confident presentation of the Carnegie Hall premiere of contemporary composer Gabriella Lena Frank’s pleasurable “Chasqui,” the fourth of a six-movement work titled, Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout, which, according to program annotator Luke Howard, was “composed as a string quartet in 2001 and then arranged for string orchestra in 2003.” He adds that “Chasqui refers to the chasqui runners of the Inca empire, agile and intelligent messenger-carriers who sprinted between towns separated by the high Andean peaks.” About the author of the work, he writes:

Frank studied composition at Rice University and earned her doctorate from the University of Michigan. She has received numerous commissions from leading ensembles that include The Cleveland Orchestra, the King’s Singers, Kronos Quartet, and Brentano Quartet, and has participated with cellist Yo-Yo Ma in his Silk Road Project. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009, the same year she won a Latin Grammy Award. The following year she was named a United States Artist Fellow. Frank is currently composer-in-residence with The Philadelphia Orchestra, having previously served in that capacity with both the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Houston Symphony. Next month, San Diego Opera is scheduled to premiere her first opera, The Last Dream of Frida and Diego.

The evening concluded gloriously with a stunning—indeed a transformatively dynamic—reading of Antonín Dvořák’s gorgeous Symphony No. 8—this was the most extraordinary performance of this work that I have yet heard, one which emphasized its passionate, intense Romanticism. Gibbs provides a useful description:

The piece begins with a solemn and noble theme stated by clarinets, bassoons, horns, and cellos that will return at key moments in the movement (Allegro con brio). Without a change in tempo, this introductory section turns to the tonic major key as a solo flute presents the principal folk-like theme that the full orchestra soon joyously declaims. The Adagiois particularly pastoral and traverses many moods, from a passionate beginning to the sound of bird calls, the happy music making of village bands, and grandly triumphant passages. 

While Dvořák often wrote fast scherzo-like third movements, this symphony offers a more leisurely Allegretto grazioso with a waltz character in G minor. In the middle is a rustic major-key trio featuring music that will return in an accelerated duple-meter version for the movement’s coda. Trumpets proclaim a festive fanfare to open the finale (Allegro ma non troppo), which then unfolds as a set of variations on a theme stated by the cellos. The theme looks back to the flute melody of the first movement and undergoes a variety of variations with wonderful effects along the way, including raucous trills from the French horns and virtuoso flute decorations.

At this concert, the opening Allegro con brio was stirring with almost Wagnerian passages. The Adagio was lovely and bucolic but also powerfully emotional at times. The Allegretto grazioso had a somber undertone with a lyrical middle section the music of which returned in the Coda in an exuberant mode. The finale built to a nearly extreme climax.