Mark Elder with the CSO II

Mark Elder's haphazard program of Delius, Webern, Sibelius and Brahms Tuesday night at Orchestra Hall turned out (through no fault of Elder's, I should add) to be only a partial success. And the succesful moments were indisputably his doing. One suspects that the mammoth Brahms Double Concerto hitched incongruously to the end of a program of short, musically concentrated works was the result more of insistence from CSO higher-ups on including a Romantic masterwork than on Elder's programming sensibilities. The glowing pastoral impressionism of the Delius, the bracing intensity of the Sibelius, and the extreme economy and surprising expressiveness of the Webern were wonderfully complementary. The Brahms seemed to impede on the sense of focus and subtlety achieved by the combination of works preceding it rather than make for a rousing finale.

The disappointing effect of the Brahms, though, went beyond how out of place it was in this program of short 20th century works. This is a work that, because of the modest use of tutti orchestral passages ("modest" at least in relation to Brahms' greatest concertos, which really resemble symphonies as much as works for soloist and orchestra) depends on great chamber music from the violinist and cellist. The cellist this night was Jan Volger, appearing for the first time with the CSO, and his exuberant unpredictability made for some awkward moments (and slippery intonation) when set against the effortless virtuosity and generosity of CSO concertmaster Robert Chen on violin. Still, while Volger's risk-taking made for an incoherent reading of the part, it also yielded some wonderful moments: for one, the full-throated, cellistic sound he brought to bear on the opening movement's second theme, which, presumably because it's introduced delicately by the violin, most cellists play with a sort of affectedly lilting and thin vibrato that doesn't match the instrument's sonority. Another memorable note struck byVolger was the daring rubato with which he played the second movement's main tune when it re-entered at the end of the movement. Here he lingered bravely over tastefully chosen downbeats and Chen seemed obliged to follow his lead.

I was worried that an over-familiarity with favorite recordings of the Sibelius 6th (namely those by Lorin Maazel and Paavo Berglund) would make it hard to appreciate Elder's reading of this little masterpiece. But just the opposite occurred: Elder launched into this taughtly melodic, alternatingly pensive and light-footed, profoundly unusual little masterpiece with a sense of rhythmic drive I've never heard. And Elder wisely let the sinuous, scalar, modal lines, rather than accompanying vamps, establish the work's sense of pace. This is a symphony with such a memorable, other-worldly repertoire of melodies that too many conductors allow themselves to linger with ill-fitting Romanticism over the "landmark" moments. Against this approach, Elder drove what was sadly a sometimes sluggish and unresponsive orchestra through these moments with a sense of beautiful inevitability, rather than heavy significance. This confirmed, for me at least, that he's a musician with an uncanny ability to truly work from within a piece of music, with interpretations that come pretty close to nailing what a composer has to say.

Mark Elder with the CSO

Thanks to Jenny for getting the Ears and Eyes propers taken care of. Since everyone's appraised of that business, I wanted to give a heads up that one of the CSO's more intriguing series of the season is currently underway, and wraps up Tuesday the 11th at 7:30. (I haven't heard it yet, by the way: I'll be going to the Tuesday show.

I say "intriguing" for two reasons. For one, the guest conductor, Mark Elder, is a young and tremendously gifted and sensitive musician, as well as an innovative programmer; he is really worth making the trip to Michigan and Adams. Interestingly, (and very encouragingly), he's been given two subscription series this season, (most guest conductors get one), which may mean the CSO wants to take a longer look at him as a candidate to fill the vacant principal conductor position. Let's hope they look long and hard, because Chicago really deserves someone young and open-minded enough to forge a long relationship with the orchestra, which is really how major orchestras get their "signature sound", as the CSO did with Solti and Barenboim or the way Los Angeles is right now with Esa-Pekka Salonen. Elder would be both a better and less easy choice than some 75 year old European, a type the CSO seems overly enamored with, who would be simply too steeped in a bygone era of classical music to be able to grow with--meaning, shape and be shaped by--an orchestra over a long period of time.

Just as intriguing as the possibility of Elder taking up residence in Chicago is the quirky program he's put together. He seems incapable of putting together a "give them what they want" bill, and this series is definitely no exception. There is one familiar warhorse on the program: Brahms Double Concerto for Violin and Cello. There aren't many, (including myself), who would put this piece in the same class as Brahms' greatest symphonic works. But strangely, despite its lack of Brahms' usual formal integrity and ingenious sense of motivic flow, it contains some of his most memorable moments. And the question of its "success" as a symphonic work aside, the writing for the solo instruments is totally captivating: violin and cello, often in double stops, weave sinuous lines around each other with a proximity that enticingly approaches but rarely reaches the point of unison. And when unison lines do show up (as in the opening theme of the Adagio, a stately pentatonic tune delivered by the soloists in stark octaves) they are all the more bracing for the brilliant economy of their use.

I'm most looking forward to Elder's reading of Sibelius' 6th Symphony. This is a tremendously vital, compact work which is, confoundingly, almost never played. The CSO hasn't played it since the 70s, and that was probably an accident or something. At any rate, I hope Elder brings his ability to get inside unusual music to bear on this decidedly unusual symphony. Sibelius' post-Romantic phase, (the 3rd Symphony on, roughly), is sadly under-appreciated, probably because his emphasis on a sort of profound, inscrutable and warm formal heart underlying the music takes too much trouble for people to recognize as innovative when his contemporaries were turning music into chaos. At any rate, the Sibelius 6th is the piece I think most perfectly realizes his late-period symphonic ideal of cohesion and fluidity through the use of brief, bracingly original motifs that are expanded upon through accumulation and subtle metamorphosis rather than through sprawling, Beethoven-esque development sections.

"Searching" is a word one hears now and then to describe certain music: that of, say, Coltrane, Beethoven, and Mahler. (Though Mahler, for all his bombastic yearning and searching, never seemed to have much trouble finding, and then wallowing grotesquely in, big, universal, but ultimately banal emotion. The same could be said of another inexplicable celebrity in classical music, Shostakovitch. In fact this gripe with Shostakovitch--that is, too much easy, transparent emotion--is one that was an absolute conviction of Daniel Barenboim, and the relative dearth of Shostakovitch during the Barenboim era was one of the reasons I thought that conductor was such a big loss to the orchestra.)

The notion of music that is always searching or striving is useful in describing what Sibelius' music is decidedly not like. There is an almost mystical surety and a sense of the music being inexplicably "found" and realized from the downbeat to the final bar line of the 6th Symphony. The opening strains in the high strings, recalling sublime Rennaisance polyphony, rooted neither to harmony nor tempo, seem to just materialize from the very air. No self-aware compositional ego there. I'm guessing music as beautiful and yet anti-egoistic as this will get wonderful treatment in the hands of a fundamentally generous musician like Elder.

The other composers on the program are Webern--all I know about him was that he aped Schoenberg's 12-tone style and was a real-life Nazi!--and Delius, who was English I think, and who wrote a string quartet I really like, and...actually that's all I got on Delius. Perhaps an aficionado of the obscure out there (Brian?) could fill out the portrait of Mr. Delius a little.

So, yeah: let's all go see Elder with the CSO on Tuesday, and remember that there's a vitally important campaign going on: Elder for music director!

Been listening to:
Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 6 (Lorin Maazel with the Vienna Philharmonic)
Fridge: Happiness
Norman Blake: Fields of November
Jason Moran: Soundtrack to Human Motion
The Sonny Stitt Quartet: Personal Appearence