The idea was to use Leonard Bernstein’s “Opening Prayer (Benediction)” as a prelude: a short, solemn plea for the spiritual sustenance of a musical season. It was originally written for the reopening of Carnegie Hall in 1986. Despite the rousing brass fanfare with which it opens, its mood is pensive and somber, befitting our present moment of national anxiety. And it was to be suitably followed by “The Age of Anxiety,” Bernstein’s elaborate musical rendition of W. H. Auden’s Pulitzer Prize-winning long poem about the anomie in the post-war generation, one of the composer’s most important and interesting symphonic scores. But this was not to be: pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, scheduled for the concerto-like piano solo, had to drop out and the work was abandoned. I guess that not even Yuja Wang could learn that very difficult part on short notice.
The good news was that she was available as a substitute, and presumably chose the Liszt Piano Concerto no. 1 as her vehicle. No aura of anxiety hovers around that work, nor about Wang’s absolutely dominant mastery of it. In fact, it was the high-point of the concert. The Liszt counts as one of the first true “war-horses” in the repertory, the term that came to mind when I learned of the substitution. “The Well-Tempered Ear” describes “war-horse” as follows: “[L]isteners … use the term pejoratively or disapprovingly, in a snobby or condescending way, to describe great music that is performed frequently.”
I think of a war-horse, however, as a vehicle for going into battle—a virtuoso animal that can only be controlled with great physical chops as well as interpretive derring-do, a companion on the musical battle-field. While forgotten concerti were being written during the romantic era as vehicles for display, we don’t usually hear them since their musical content is thin; the snobby term for such works is “clap-trap.” Liszt’s concerto has plenty virtuoso display, but also much more. For me, it has one of the composer’s most interesting and well-thought-out musical structures, and the surprise is that it has been a long time since I have heard a live performance of it, until Friday night. Perhaps it has been deemed passé, but not by Yuja Wang! She clearly knows it chapter and verse—and (to mix a metaphor) rode it gleefully into battle, to the delight of the audience and obviously the orchestra as well.
I want to discuss the concerto and Wang’s performance further, but first I want to indicate that the big piece on the second half, Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” was performed so poorly that I am reluctant to devote much space to it. Five years ago it was given an absolutely great, world-class reading at Tanglewood by conductor Giancarlo Guerrero; this performance couldn’t lay a glove on it. More about that later.
Liszt’s concerto uses a novel approach to form. Normally, concerti were and still are in three or four separate movements. But Liszt had an ambition to interrelate all parts of the concerto into a unified dramatic and melodic arc, and he developed an integrated form where the movements flow together as sections of one continuous organism. (There is one such model prior to Liszt: Schubert’s “Wanderer Fantasy” for piano, which Liszt adored.) Each of the main sections of Liszt’s concerto (corresponding to traditional movements) feels incomplete in itself, but all four linked together form a satisfying musical whole. The composer used the same concept on a larger scale in his Piano Sonata in B minor, perhaps his most significant work.
We are used to thinking of Liszt as the ultimate virtuoso, and of course he was; the piano writing in this concerto is typically brilliant, wide-ranging, gasp-inducing. Contrary to snobbish and condescending opinion, however, he was a serious musical explorer, and this concerto represents a wonderful balance of all his characteristics, including his Faustian-Mephistophelean temperament and his warm romantic lyricism. There is a unified melodic scheme: the opening powerful assertion by the entire orchestra launches a series of variations and extensions that pervades the work up to the final notes. The dialogue between the orchestra and soloist is one of equal forces: unlike the second movement of Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto, in which a quiet and eloquent piano tames the rude utterances of the orchestral strings, here the piano immediately responds to power with more power. The conversation is sometimes competitive, sometimes collaborative: in quieter sections the piano weaves a magical web of harmony around soulful lyrical statements by solo clarinet, violin, or cello. Elsewhere the tintinnabulations of a triangle fuse with brilliant writing for the highest piano register, conjuring Mephistopheles’ elfin trickery.
There is a danger that with the strategy of deferred endings and lyrical interludes the concerto will seem fragmentary and episodic. This would be particularly the case if the performers choose to exaggerate fast passages and linger over slower moments. The miracle of this performance was that each moment was given its full expressive value and yet everything held together. Wang dared to reduce her powerful dynamic range to a whisper for intimate moments, drawing the attention of the audience from the farthest reaches of the Shed. Such was the power of the other sections that the contrasts created a charged electrical atmosphere; one breathlessly awaited the return of the thunder and lightning. Wang is a miraculous performer whose virtuosity transcends the demands of the score and always adds extra value, converting difficulty into joyful expression, and allowing the music to make its own statement fully without apparent exaggeration or willfulness. She does not back off from technical display—there is no façade of either arrogance or modesty, no over-thinking, just a complete inhabitation of what is implicit in the score. This is what sets her apart from the other (many) super virtuosos of her generation and always makes her playing riveting. The same was true of her encore, which is indeed a piece of unalloyed virtuosity: Horowitz’s confection of themes from Carmen. Here Wang threw her fans the red meat they were hoping for, outdoing even Horowitz himself.
So what was wrong with “The Rite?” What wasn’t? Technically it was a mess; there were shockingly wrong entrances and insecure playing. The brasses over-played. Balances were off. Details that should have been in the background were over-emphasized, while layers of texture that should have been in the foreground were almost inaudible.
Stravinsky hated “interpretation;” he just wanted musicians to adhere to the score, and to leave out their personal feelings. During one period following the premier of “The Rite,” he started composing for player pianos. (This is the same impulse that led Milton Babbitt to begin composing for synthesizers forty years later.) What was great about that Guerrero/BSO performance was that they delivered the score with an almost hallucinatory vividness, perfectly capturing its unique rhythmic character. What is that character? The music is built on perfectly regular pulsations that organize all other aspects of the music. This is why dancers love everything Stravinsky composed. There are quantum shifts (or jolts) in the pulse-rates that define the various sections and actions, but these need to be crystal clear and absolutely steady. All the layers in the score need to be audible, unlike romantic works where there are backgrounds that are meant to be perceived subliminally. Andris Nelsons met almost none of these requirements. He “interpreted” by foregrounding some elements, manipulating the pulses in the name of “expression,” and muddying the texture. I think this approach gave the musicians the jitters. The result was noisy and random-sounding, the stereotype of ugly modern music (despite the score’s venerable 109 years).
Nelsons clearly has a romantic concept of this piece which is ill-suited to it. Guerrero enlisted the enthusiasm of his musicians and they played the paint off the walls. It was collective music-making at its best. This performance had one person trying to impose his vision on the group. That doesn’t usually turn out well.
