Schoenberg, Schubert, Brahms: Philadelphia Orchestra, Christophe Eschenbach, conductor; Matthias Goerne, baritone. Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, 26.05.2007 (HS)  


As the Philadelphia Orchestra played for the second time in a week on tour in San Francisco, the recent history of conductor Christophe Eschenbach's turmoil with the musicians would not go away. Recently, the orchestra's board told Eschenbach that his five-year tenure as conductor would end after next season, publicly stating that 80 percent of the musicians didn't like his musical interpretations and didn't want him back. Thus, the orchestra that enjoyed one of the longest and richest conductorial tenures (Eugene Ormandy led it from 1936 to 1980) now faces an uncertain future as Eschenbach's short stay winds down.

That wouldn't matter if the music making had the attention of all hands, but apparently it does not. Last week's performance of the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 (which I missed because I was traveling) by all accounts was stupendous, but the rest of the concert was a yawn. And, for a while, the cobwebs fell away for a remarkably sleek traversal of Brahms' Symphony No. 1 on Saturday night's concert. But the road was bumpier through Schoenberg's ultra-busy Chamber Symphony and an oddly matched set of Schubert songs, sung by baritone Matthias Goerne.

On paper, the program promised a certain sense of cohesion. The Schoenberg piece, which opened the concert, was the composer's last gasp of ultra-Romantic, hyper-chromatic fervor before veering into what became known as atonality. Musicologists like to say that Schoenberg was the only late Romantic composer who successfully integrated the supposedly antithetical musical ideas of Brahms and Wagner, so using Brahms' first symphony as a bookend makes a certain intellectual sense. The Schubert songs, written for voice and piano but given in orchestrations by several famous composers, including two by Brahms, the others by Reger and Webern, who like Schoenberg is best remembered for his atonal work.

In practice, nothing fit. Musically, the Schoenberg symphony shares little in common with Brahms' first. And neither has the purity and simple directness of the Schubert songs. To these ears, the denseness of Brahms' and Reger's orchestrations works against the clarity of Schubert's music, which may be why we hear them so seldom. It would have been fascinating and more cohesive to hear more orchestral transcriptions of other composers' songs from Webern, who gave us the inimitable instrumentation of Bach's Ricercare à 6.

As it was, Goerne was unfazed by the sonorities behind him, even when the density overwhelmed his light, lyric baritone as it reached toward the bottom of his range. He simply stood there, rocking his body at times like a dancer, pouring out the long, legato lines of "Im Abendrot" with uncanny intonation and pure, even sound, even when Reger's massed low strings and woodwinds rendered some notes inaudible.

Brahms' interpretations of "Memnon" and "Gruppe aus dem Tartarus" also carried more avoirdupois than Goerne's voice deserved, and Eschenbach did little to achieve a better balance. This became particularly annoying in Reger's version of "Erlkönig," wherein the staccato triplet figures in the bass, so vivid and sharp on the piano, turned to mush in the famously sonorous Philadelphia string sound.

Webern got it right in his two songs, "Der Wegweiser" from  Winterreise and "Tränenregen" from Die schöne Müllern. In the former, the sense of quiet resignation in the face of death came through vividly. The piece sits comfortably in Goerne's range, with no exposed low notes and plenty of sweet high notes. Webern assigns a short figure that accompanies the line "und ich wand're sonder" ("and I wander on") to a muted horn, an extraordinary effect. In the latter, Webern achieves an ideal transparency of texture in the gently lilting 3/4, providing a swaying bed for Goerne's unfettered, almost conversational approach.

Aside from that, balances were an issue throughout the first half of the program, especially in the Schoenberg symphony. In this taut, densely packed music, ideas come and go rapidly, which requires a level of communication between conductor and ensemble that may no longer exist between Eschenbach and his troops. They were working hard, and it sounded like it.

So, how to explain the brilliance of the Brahms symphony? My guess is that this is music the orchestra knows so well it can do it on auto-pilot. This was take-no-prisoners Brahms, direct, uncluttered by conductorial affectations, pitiless in the way it shed the barnacles of tradition to present the music as something shiny and new.

The opening bars felt fierce and potent, Eschenbach setting a strong pulse that didn't let up until the long ritard at the end of the movement. That led to a second movement of surprising contentment and grace. If the scherzo could have danced a bit more gaily, the finale opened with a furious tempest and an astonishing display of unanimity in the plucked-string accelerandos of the opening section. The C major tune arrived with simplicity and a dry eye.

Balances were not a problem in the Brahms, although there was one interesting moment that no doubt was intentional. In the final pages, when the brass chorale returns in fortissimo glory, most conductors let the trumpets, trombones, horns and woodwinds muscle up and let their sound pour out in full depth. This time, they held back so much that it was the Philadelphians' signature string sound that came to the fore. I'm not sure I prefer that, but for a change of pace it was refreshing.

Eschenbach never let up on the tempo, driving it though to an unblinking finish. The encore, Brahms' Hungarian Dance No. 2, brought more than a few smiles.

 

Harvey Steiman