Music I'm Listening to: The Santa Rosa Symphony with Bruno Ferrandis and Elina Vähälä (March 20, 2011)

I attended a Santa Rosa Symphony concert Sunday afternoon (March 20) conducted by Bruno Ferrandis. The program included Serious Song, by contemporary composer Wolfgang Rihm, Symphony No. 4 by Brahms, and the Brahms Violin Concerto, with soloist Elina Vähälä.

Overall, an enjoyable concert, but rather uneven, I'm afraid.

I did like the Rihm Serious Song. Immediately upon entering the concert hall it was apparent that something a little unusual was about to begin; there were no violins on stage--among the strings, only the violas, cellos, and basses were present. Also unusual was the presence of four clarinets at the front of the ensemble. I would say the piece didn't seem very song-like, but it was certainly serious. Opening with quavering dissonances among the four clarinets in the low register, the piece was dark and somber throughout with all the instruments mainly being given the lower notes in their ranges. No flutes either. According to the program notes, the piece was commissioned by conductor Wolfgang Swallisch who wanted a composition explicitly evoking Brahms. Composer Rihm was particularly impressed by the Four Serious Songs by Brahms and looked also to the example of the Deutches Requiem for the orchestration without the bright-sounding violins and flutes. To many I suspect this tone poem--that's what it seemed to be--will sound too abstract, too somber, too brooding, but it appealed to me. I applaud the inclusion of something rather different from the standard fare. It was a nice counterpoint to the very familiar pieces that followed.

In the Brahms Violin Concerto Soloist Vähälä played well, but seemed to have difficulty keeping her instrument in tune. I always hesitate to say things like that (not that anyone cares very much what I say) because I never trust my ears entirely, but I thought she was out of tune for about the first third of the first movement--a little bit sharp on at least one string. She tried to retune a couple of times using the fine adjustments at the bridge but finally resorted to turning one of the tuning pegs--a very risky thing to do while in the middle of playing, given the coarse adjustment the tuning peg provides. I'm persuaded that I was not mistaken about her difficulties by the extensive tuning she did between the first and second movements. Once she got things straightened out, everything sounded better.

Her instrument had a surprisingly strident sound. As it happens, that was rather effective in some of the rapid passages of double-stopping in the concerto, but otherwise it gave a cold and at times somewhat whiny impression. She was playing a 1678 Stradivarius. I am no expert, but I do know that that would be an early violin in Stradivari's career. Perhaps that has something to do with it? The second movement was marred by repeated wobbly entrances by at least one of the horns. Having said all that, I thought the Santa Rosa Symphony musicians focused and responding much better to Maestro Ferrandis's direction than usual, which is a good thing, and it's always interesting to hear such a familiar piece live. Despite the hiccups, I enjoyed hearing the concerto and the crowd--notably younger than is usual in Santa Rosa--was very appreciative.

The Fourth Symphony by Brahms is another very familiar piece, being one of the first I was attracted to during my shift as a teenager away from rock music in favor of classical. I'm afraid the ensemble wasn't quite up to it. The focus apparent during the violin concerto was nowhere apparent here. The players simply weren't together much of the time. Still, the ensemble has come very far in the 10 years I've been a subscriber to their concerts, and I mean no ill will. I'm glad they're here and I will continue to support them. At their best, they can be very fine indeed.

Photos of Bruno Ferrandis and Elina Vähälä courtesy of the Santa Rosa Symphony

Music I'm Listening To: Brahms Violin Concerto

Having just heard the Lazic piano transcription of the Brahms Violin Concerto (see my recent post on the subject), I listened today to a few of the records I have of the piece (yes, vinyl)--such as the Erica Morini recording on Westminster (WST 14037) pictured here and a Jascha Heifetz recording (RCA Red Seal LM-1903). Neither is dated, but I'm guessing the Morini is from about 1959--in my experience, the threshold year for modern sound; it's in stereo and it sounds quite full--and that the Heifetz recording is probably a few years older. I found dates on various websites that put them in that period, but couldn't find anything definitive. I was surprised to find auction results for the Morini recording at more than $100. This is one of many records I bought for a dollar or two at the used record stores in Columbus, Ohio in the early 1980s. Remember Mole's Records on High Street? (I think it was above Bernie's Bagels.) The Morini recording is from one of the stranger periods in LP cover design--when it was fashionable to adorn record jackets with photographs of objects that had little or no relationship to the music. Photographs of the performers must have been considered immodest at the time.

I had come back from a year in Japan not long before I bought this record. I had become a regular drinker of ice coffee, which was (and is) extremely popular in Japan, but the idea hadn't made much headway in Columbus yet; I had to teach the people at Bernie's how to make ice coffee by pouring hot coffee over a knife blade (to help dissipate the heat) and into a large glass of ice. Things have changed a bit since then. I still have trouble grasping the fact that 1980 is 30 years ago. 

But I digress. I still like both recordings, and it's almost fun now to have to turn the record over somewhere in the middle. I even find the occasional scratches and pops somehow comforting, although I despised the distraction in the days before CDs, when a perfectly noiseless recording was virtually impossible. Now that it is possible, the noise on old records doesn't bother me any more. 

Reading the liner notes to the Westminster release there was one interesting tidbit: The Violin Concerto, in three movements, was originally conceived in four, but Brahms threw out the two short middle movements he originally wrote and replaced them with the Adagio we now know as the middle movement. The liner essay (by Irving Kolodin) notes that parts of the discarded movements were later used in the second piano concerto Brahms wrote. Lazic's idea of converting the violin solo into a piano solo begins to seem less far fetched than it did at first.

Last time I heard anything about Erica Morini it was news that her beloved violin, the "Davidoff" Stradivarius (1727), had been stolen shortly before she died in 2005, at the age of 91. I wonder if they ever recovered it?

[Update: I did a little searching. As far as I can tell, the violin is still missing, but I notice that it's now referred to as the "Davidoff-Morini." That seems fitting; she owned it for nearly 75 years.]  

Music I'm Listening To: An Old Friend in Someone Else's Skin

I had an odd experience today listening to the radio in the car. I felt like I had come face to face with an old friend in someone else's skin. The gestures were familiar, the sound of the voice exhilarating and evocative of shared past experience; I knew the person immediately. But there was something entirely new, something completely unknown--a very disorienting feeling. Still, it was an exciting feeling, creating an irresistible need to listen closely, to try to understand the changed form the familiar now inhabited--and to relate that back to the original, comparing.

This is a surprisingly taxing thing to do. It requires great concentration, and it forces a decision, a mental transformation. Either we abandon the old and accept the new (rarely easy), separating what is from what we remember it to have been, or we must reject the new outright. Some transformations go smoothly, others remain works in progress with uncertain outcomes.

For a moment, I thought I was listening to the Brahms Double Concerto (for violin and cello). Then immediately I thought I was listening to the Brahms Violin Concerto. Next, I thought I was simply listening to one of the two Brahms piano concertos, as the solo instrument was most certainly a piano, not a violin or a cello--but none of these ideas quite made sense. As I was listening to the piano, I kept hearing the music as it seemed it ought to have been--played instead by a violin. The music was both eerily familiar and new at the same time. Had this been Vivaldi or Bach, I don't think the confusion would have been so deep. I drove the long way home, waiting for the music to finish, eager to hear who and what I was listening to--although, by the time the music was over, I had come to the only conclusion that made any sense: this was a transcription for piano of the Brahms Violin Concerto. 

And so it was. I was listening to Johannes Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 3 [sic], arranged by Dejan Lazic (Dejan Lazic, piano; Robert Spano conducting the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; Channel Classics CCS SA 29410.) This is a new disc, released March 9, 2010.

Brahms wrote only two piano concertos, but Mr. Lazic has conjured another one for us. According to what I've been able to find, Lazic has left the orchestral score untouched, but he has re-conceived the solo violin part for piano and written new cadenzas.

It's surprising how well the piece has made the transition from a concerto for stringed instrument to a piece featuring piano. It's virtually impossible not to hear the sound of bow on string in certain passages, in part because they are so familiar to the ear, but also because, having been conceived for violin, they naturally take advantage of the strengths and peculiarities of that instrument. It's hard to convert cantabile passages for violin into music for what is essentially a percussion instrument without doing them some violence, but Lazic's transcription is extremely persuasive. Only in a few places did I find myself longing for the scrape and grit of the string--only in a few places did I find it impossible to abandon the old friend for the new. All in all, a remarkable creation. I wonder if Brahms would have minded? Recommended.