Henze, Bruch, Ravel, Stravinsky: Itzhak Perlman, Violin, New York Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, Conductor, Avery Fisher Hall, New York City, 19.09.2006 (BH)

 

 

Henze: Sebastian in Traum, Salzburger Nachtmusik auf eine Dichtung von George Trakl (Dream of Sebastian, Salzburg Night-Music on a poem by Geog Trakl; 2003-04; U.S. Premiere; New York Philharmonic Co-Commission)

Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 (1864-67)

Ravel: Rapsodie Espagnole (1907)

Stravinsky: L’Oiseau de feu (The Firebird): Suite for Orchestra (1919)

 

 

Feeling its way along Summer’s green stairway.  O how softly,

The garden decays in the russet hush of Autumn,

Scent and sadness of the ancient elders,

When in Sebastian’s shadow the angels’ silver voices died away.

 

  -- final stanza of Sebastian im Traum: für Adolf Loos, by Georg Trakl

 

 

A sensuously played new Henze piece, Sebastian in Traum, opened this eclectic program that ultimately showed once again how happy the musicians of the New York Philharmonic are these days.  (And that makes us happy, too.)  About fifteen minutes long, the single movement is based on a poem by Austrian writer Georg Trakl, whose experiences in World War I so traumatized him that he died of a drug overdose in Cracow.  Henze’s realization of Trakl’s poem has the soft pulse and retreat of breathing, of a dream that surges almost to the point of awakening the sleeper, and then recedes back into some shadowy netherworld.  The friend with me called it “brooding,” and that impression was fortified by some impressively shaded work from the musicians.

 

In rather abrupt contrast, the Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 is a genial, definitely non-brooding work with some winning innocence.  Itzhak Perlman brought an obvious affinity to the score, but I confess that just having heard this work with exactly these same forces and Gil Shaham last February, I wasn’t convinced it needed to be programmed just seven months later.  There is a long list of works that rarely see the lights of the concert hall stage, and Maazel and his fabulous group should be exploring more of them.  Anyway, back to the actual music at hand: Perlman did a fine job, but Shaham seemed more deeply involved in the music, touching more of its expressivity.  The orchestra, however, offered an even richer, more elastic sound to assist Mr. Perlman.  Yes, the group is only getting better.

 

The Ravel and Stravinsky were played about as well as anyone could possibly imagine.  Maazel’s slightly slower speeds in the Rapsodie Espagnole meant that every last piece of lace, every tiny mote of Spanish dust was in place.  The initial Prélude à la Nuit boasted gauzy, muted trumpets and woodwinds unfurling as if taking some air on a wrought-iron balcony, followed by a delicate Malagueña, its mysterious curtain opening and closing on its dancers in the blink of an eye.  The Habanera that follows seems like a lazy afternoon in the Spanish sun, with a dance that keeps trying to take flight but lapses into torpor.  But there is no inertia in the finale, the riotous Feria, and here the New York Philharmonic showed playing as brilliant as I’ve seen all year.  If Maazel loves to linger – to caress passages almost to the point that some in the audience may want to pull their hair out (similar to his stretching Ravel’s La Valse almost to the bursting point last season) – but he obviously adores the composer’s unrivaled sense of color and rhythm, and the chance to inject a little wit into the proceedings.  It’s not the Ravel everyone prefers, but I couldn’t stop replaying it in my head on the way home.

 

The Stravinsky opened with an unearthly tread, completely malevolent, and the menace only increased, bar by stealthy bar.  Carter Brey’s limpid solo in The Princesses’ Khorovod was just one example of the cleanly satisfying playing that has taken hold during Maazel’s tenure.  I had to laugh at the whiplash attack in Kaschei’s dance, simply because Maazel’s instincts are true; he knows where the big moments are in a score like this, and how to make them sing.  The rhythmic changes were so precise that in another universe, I would have donned wings and a bird’s head and been in the aisle, dancing.  The winsome Lullaby did not disappoint, nor did the finale.  And again, if the drama seemed milked almost to a fault, one could hardly ignore the aurora borealis of colors arcing across the ceiling of Avery Fisher Hall, and isn’t that what one wants at the end of The Firebird?

 

 

 

 

Bruce Hodges