At Tanglewood: Ballet, vignettes, concertos and ‘symphonies’

This past weekend at Tanglewood left me yearning to hear the Boston Symphony Orchestra play something really symphonic. I want symphonies, formed with utter naturalness into an organic and satisfying whole. In particular, I want to hear Mozart and Haydn. Their symphonies have never been one of the most regular parts of the concert repertoire — a great injustice to them and to classical music lovers. For they are, along with Beethoven, the greatest masters of the symphony, and of symphonic form in particular. Indeed, symphonic form, is, in my opinion, only natural to that Classical period, and while certain Romantic composers — Brahms and Mendelssohn — could employ it with great effectiveness to fit their Romantic idioms — somewhat miraculously, I think — all the same, the main glory of the symphony rests in this great Classical triumvirate. And while Beethoven’s symphonies are always well represented, those of Haydn are rarely heard; neither are those of the ever-popular Mozart, apart from the Jupiter. Some of this could be called the greatest music ever written. May we please hear it?

You may well ask, did not the BSO play two very large symphonies this past weekend? Tchaikovsky’s 4^th and 6^th are indeed referred to as symphonies, that much I grant you. But they have none of that naturalness of symphonic form that makes a great symphony so rewarding. Tchaikovsky himself well knew this; in 1878 he wrote to this patron Nadezhda von Meck:

“Although I cannot complain of poor inventive powers or imagination, I have always suffered from lack of skill in the management of form. Only persistent labor has at last permitted me to achieve a form that in some degree corresponds to the content…Yet my compositions will never be good examples of form, because I can only correct what is wrong with my musical nature — I cannot change it intrinsically.”

Tchaikovsky’s last three symphonies, (or four, counting the less often heard, too long and over-the-top, but terribly fun, Manfred), are, as everyone knows, full of delicious music; classical music fans will always come out to hear them in (comparatively speaking) droves. Sure, Tchaikovsky’s symphonies don’t have much in the way of organic symphonic form, but as, shall we say, balletic fantasies, they are superb. Certainly, as in any ballet, the transition from one scene to another isn’t as natural as a good symphonic transition, and the music doesn’t seem as unified as in a symphony. But if in Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, the form does not make a glorious whole greater than the sum of its parts, it does “correspond to its content” well — it holds together music of very contrasting tempo and character that would never fit into a more classically formed work.

When these balletic fantasies are performed, especially the 4^th and 6^th (the 5^th is the most classically symphonic, and reasonably successful at it), as there are no dancers on the stage (though they would be welcome), the orchestra has to deliver so much drama, achingly songful phrasing, and sheer loveliness of sound that we become immersed in the particular scenes and don’t start worrying about the weak transitions. The 4^th in particular, while full of good music, is also full of very poor music—labored development and transition passages that go nowhere, and above all, harmonic sequences that keep going up and up with utter silliness, like one of those third rate pop songs that goes through five half-step-up key changes. So above all, for the 4^th to work, the conductor has to do something. He has the rather difficult task of letting the orchestra feel at ease, so they can sound ravishing, while pushing and pulling the tempo so as to render the melodies most effective and to keep up the interest in the duller spots. With this piece, I will gladly take any sort of wild and bizarre uses of tempo—the type people like Mengleberg or Koussevitzky would bring to Tchaikovsky. This is not, after all, music of restraint.

But Saturday’s maestro, Stèphane Denève seemed quite content to do nothing at all, or nothing other than standing there beating his stick and letting the orchestra take care of itself. In doing so, he mercilessly exposed all the many flaws in the piece. As a result, the orchestra did not sound lovely and at ease, they simply sounded bored. The strings that can sound now rich and warm, now bright and ethereal (and even did so in the first half of Saturday’s concert), sounded considerably more cold and dull, and too weak in the climaxes to sufficiently carry their melodies over the brassy accompaniments. I suppose the performance could be considered quite an achievement in that the first movement seemed to possess so little pathos for a piece so obviously full of it. The playing seemed heavy without strength, the tempo metronomic, apart from the written accelerandi, which seemed not quite gradual enough.

The first time Denève seemed to really do anything was during the second movement oboe solo, which, though it is hard to tell looking from behind, he seemed trying to manipulate too much, instead of letting the very musical oboist take care of it himself. During this movement, the strings’ tone remained cold; they seemed asleep. They didn’t really wake up till the third movement. Here — in the string pizzicato sections (not in the wind sections — they sounded a bit tired), Denève finally seemed in his element. Conducting this giant harp, he managed to phrase nicely, and make the movement rather delightful, which it is. In the finale, which is very poorly structured and full of those absurd sequences ever pushing upward, the orchestra seemed at times to finally relax and have some fun. Hearing the piece, it’s pretty clear what those times are — when the frantic scales of the opening theme cease and the full orchestra plays that catchy F major tune in full bombast. How could they or we not enjoy those moments?

Tchaikovksy’s 6^th symphony, being a better piece than 4^th, might not need quite the great performance that the 4^th needs to work. It is mostly full of very good material, and has many fewer laboriously wandering transition sections. The transitions are certainly not symphonic — as in a ballet, one scene ends — the lovers — and another begins — it’s the evil sorcerer! But from moment to moment, it is mostly very engaging. And on Sunday afternoon, we did have in David Zinman a conductor who tried, at least, to do something. He did have some sort of sense of phrasing. Unfortunately, the orchestra might have been better left alone; his phrasing seemed choppy, and especially in the earlier movements, I have never heard this orchestra sound worse. The cellos at least did shine when in the spotlight — in their 5/8 second movement waltz tune, for instance, but the violins sounded very uncomfortable. Runs were almost uniformly messy, and their tone was even weaker and colder than during the 4^th the previous night. The winds sounded scrappy. Knowing how well this orchestra can play and how good its players are, the blame has to rest with the conductor. Tchaikovsky, if nothing else, must sound lovely. There are moments in this piece — that oft repeated (perhaps too oft, but ah well), second theme in the first movement, that could bring me close to tears when in the hands of a great conductor. Zinman didn’t come close.

Zinman’s sense of balance was also, to put it mildly, somewhat miscalculated. I have never heard the BSO brass so loud, and yet their forte tone was not particularly attractive. The violins, even in their greatest performances, could never hope to cut through that wall of brass. Tchaikovsky — who is accepted by all authorities, love him or loath him, as a great orchestrator, rarely scores his tuttis with the melody and accompaniment dispersed through all the sections (in which case, the trumpets would be playing the top melodic line). The melody is often played by all the strings (minus basses), or all the strings supported by winds, with the brass accompanying. But in those latter moments I could barely hear the melody at all.

But don’t I have anything nice to say? Lest you think that I am the sort of snob that never likes a performance unless it is on a record from 1938, let me assure you that I heard, in my opinion, some very fine performances this past weekend. On Friday night, Leonard Slatkin had the orchestra sounding uniformly lovely.

Friday’s concert was really a succession of musical bits and pieces: vignettes; and by this, I am not principally referring to Elgar’s Enigma variations. The evening began with an exercise in pointlessness — a little William Bolcom premiere called “Circus Overture: into the eighth decade.” If this was trying to be a fun sort of curtain-raiser (as mentioned in the composer’s note), it certainly didn’t seem so. Sure, there were bits of toe tappy rhythms, and fragments of melody. But by bits and fragments, I really mean bits and fragments. The entire piece was a collection of little pieces — fits and starts that never amounted to anything. In general, the piece was just too darn ugly to be delightful. It always irritates me when composers like Bolcom, who know what good melody is (Bolcom being a highly regarded performer of late 19^th and early 20^th century popular music), seem to avoid it, or, when treating it — a decent, well halfway decent tune in the oboe, for example — accompany it, pro forma, with 20^th century dissonance. Why does a composer have to do this? Just so they can be acceptable to our standards of “serious” music? This is sad. Bolcom clearly knows how to have a good time, but he seemed assiduous not to let us have one.

Second on Friday’s program was a little known little piece: “The Winters Past,” for oboe and strings by the American composer Wayne Barlow. And it’s a nice little find, full of rather pleasant melodic lines and rich Coplandesque sort of harmonies. Here the BSO strings, and their principal oboe John Ferrillo really shined. But, after two little pieces, I was really waiting for something substantial. And Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto certainly did not provide it. Now I can understand why this piece is popular with audiences and violinists alike. The first movement has some very attractive melodies. But again, the piece seems built upon moments that never build into anything. In the first movement, when the Orchestra first reaches a big tutti, the fire of the moment seems unearned, and thus, empty. The second movement gives us some longer stretches of melody, but still seems to wander a bit much, and once again, the climax doesn’t seem entirely deserved. And every time I hear the last movement, it seems to rush by without demanding my attention in the slightest. So I don’t give it any. There are, after all, many perpetual motion sort of movements for violin that actually work; to mention one, the first movement of Sinding’s Suite im Alten — well known to many violin students; less well known to concert goers. The problem with the Barber is that his 20^th century harmonies just don’t have the kind of key structure, which, in my opinion, can effectively organize such a movement. Without real functional harmony, it just wanders.

The violin soloist — Gil Shaham, didn’t much help either. He started out with a basically decent tone, though he was a bit shaky in the high notes and could not sufficiently project over the orchestra (Barber’s writing does seem to cover the soloist a bit much). He really lost whatever form he had in the second movement — his intonation started to waver even in the lower register. In the finale, which he must have practiced much more than the rest, he did his job in playing all the notes. Further than that, I cannot comment, as the movement offers the soloist no chance to show off quality of tone or musicality, and three quarters of the time, the orchestra predominates and you can’t really hear what the soloist is doing (though with his vigorous bowing, he is clearly doing something). I would normally be scornful that after such a middling performance of a middling piece, Shaham played an encore. But I was so glad to hear Bach’s Gavotte et Rondeau from the E major Partita, that I felt only delight. Yes, it is no great virtuoso showpiece, but Shaham gave us a fast and stylish account, with good sound, and plenty of embellishments of his own invention. This little piece is so clearly structured as to be simple. But it is a sublime simplicity.

Still, after all this music of fits and starts, a set of widely varied variations didn’t seem exactly the appropriate second half. But with the Enigma variations, we were given something rarely found among the weekend’s concerts: A good example of large-scale classical form. Elgar’s theme, however Romantic, is structured as a very classical “rounded binary form” (a sort of ABA), the like of which Haydn would use rather often in his theme and variation slow movements. Each of Elgar’s variations, however fanciful, and however far from the main theme, preserves some semblance of that ABA structure. Elgar, moreover, takes the two melodic ideas from these A and B sections and constantly plays with them; sometimes they trip over one another most amusingly. And he orders the variations in such a way as to give a convincing arc to the whole piece. Slatkin and the BSO rendered all the charms of the work very effectively. The theme was played slowly with great flexibility, making it seem, as it should, to coalesce out of the wanderings of the composers mind. I could have wished for a bit more fire in the finale, and a bit more clarity in places — Elgar’s orchestration is very busy, but on the whole, the orchestra really sang. Still, a large theme and variations movement like this, however full of great melody and charm, was hardly enough musical substance for an entire evening. After the concert, I felt rather like someone who dined at one of those expensive restaurants where tiny portions are presented on large plates, who goes home somewhat hungry, wishing he had eaten more bread. As it was, I could have had at least two Haydn symphonies before feeling quite sated.

Saturday evening’s concert got started with Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of the Faun.” There are times I really like this piece — a good performance can present it as a lovely sort of post-Wagnerian fantasy, full of pathos. But, while the orchestra sounded lovely — the strings in particular, Denève seemed content to present the work as a pleasant but rather unemotional wash of colors. Without passion, the piece, however attractive, just seems to sit there, not really caring if I pay attention.

What we certainly did get on Saturday was our first chance this Summer to see a top notch violin soloist — Leonidas Kavakos. Kavakos played with a good strong tone —projecting well over the accompaniment, and with impeccable virtuosity. I just wish he had chosen a better piece than the Polish composer Karol Szymanowski’s second concerto. While the violin part might not sound so bad by itself (then again, it might), the orchestral accompaniment is one great muddle. Even when the music works itself up to a loud tutti, the orchestra never seems that powerful because there is absolutely no sense of unity. However much the composer may have organized and planned this music, it seems to wander aimlessly. There may be some sense in how one phrase leads to another, but without any functional harmony, or real direction to tonal centers, we don’t seem to go anywhere; we just drift along as a deranged folk fiddle plays over a motley collection of instruments, each doing their own thing. I will grant, that there are many pieces of music without functional tonal harmony that work much better than this. But in any such piece, and this one is hardly as dissonant as many written well before it, when the emotional power of tonal melody and harmony are stripped away, one is apt to find something else to latch onto and call it expressive. But it is my firm belief that these are but small hillocks in a dry and flat countryside, where, having spent too much time, we have forgotten what beautiful woods and mountains really look like.

I do sympathize with Mr. Kavakos’ desire to go outside the very small standard repertoire for violin and orchestra. You can’t always play one of the six or seven major Romantic concertos. But he could, like a certain Pinchas Zuckerman, delight us with Bach and Vivaldi, or rather, if his humor is more Romantic, play something by one of those 19^th century violinist-composers such as Vieuxtemps; he could even find much better Polish violin concertos in those of Wieniawsky. Or he could simply keep playing chamber music (as I heard he did quite handsomely at this year’s Ma/Ax concert).

Speaking of which, it was not as much Tchaikovsky that brought on the aforementioned droves of concertgoers — and droves there were, on Sunday afternoon, as a certain Yo-Yo Ma. No matter the cause, or delay of the concert due to extensive backups in traffic, it is good to see so many people coming to a classical music concert. And Ma did deliver — with a lovely, if somewhat subdued account of Tchaikovsky’s Andante cantabile, and a very passionate and musical rendering of the Variations on a Rococo Theme. While the orchestra, especially in the latter piece, sounded as bad or worse than they did in the Pathetique, Ma pretty much made up for it. He may not be quite the virtuoso he once was, and I may quibble here and there with his overly soft playing in piano passages — which may work in some acoustics but not so much in the unforgiving Shed, but his songful and musical phrasing more than made up for these minor gripes. What is more, the Rococo variations gave us another example of good classical form. The theme is, once again, of the rounded binary type, and the variations, with all their variety and loveliness, seem unified due to that clarity of form. It might be pertinent to note that the ordering of variations commonly played was decided by the cellist who premiered the work, not by Tchaikovsky. I would also guess that that cellist — a certain Wilhelm Fitzenhagen — was responsible for the frequent virtuoso cadenzas, which to my taste, chop the piece up a bit too much — the work’s only real flaw, I think.