Aspen Music Festival (4): Mahler Sixth with Conlon, Dvorak Sixth with Stern, premiere by Mackey. 23.7.2007 (HS)

 

Despite gray skies, the rain stayed away from Sunday afternoon's Aspen Festival Orchestra concert in the Benedict Music Tent. That didn't stop James Conlon from providing plenty of thunder with a rough-hewn, take-no-prisoners account of Mahler's Symphony No. 6.

Conlon looked like he was ready to go 12 rounds with ol' Gustav, pumping the orchestra to a high energy level from the opening bars and seldom letting up through the symphony's 80 minutes. What the performance may have lacked in finesse it more than made up for in sheer power. And make no mistake, there is plenty of room for finesse in this work, in which Mahler builds up tremendous musical structures before making them crash to earth with three massive hammer blows of fate. They're literal hammer blows, too. A percussionist whacks a gigantic box, setting off a slow-motion collapse in the orchestra, marked by fearsome minor chords in the brass.

By this point, about an hour into the music, the orchestra was chugging along well. But it was a bumpy road getting there. Ragged playing robbed the first movement of some of its shape. Conlon placed the Andante second in this performance (it's usually done third, after the sarcastic Scherzo), which seemed to give the musicians a chance regroup in the slow moving lines. The Scherzo had plenty of bite, and once the snowball started rolling down the slope in the finale, there was no backing off.

Conlon opened the concert with a set of songs by Alma Mahler, whose career as a composer and musician Gustav cut short. They're well crafted and listenable, especially when sung so sympathetically by mezzo soprano Kristine Jepson.

At Friday's Aspen Chamber Symphony concert in the tent, two evocations of the jazz theme for this year's festival occupied the first half. They couldn't have been more different. Milhaud's "La création du monde" dates from 1923, when serious composers first tried to use jazz. Stephen Hartke's 2001 clarinet concerto "Landscapes with Blues" brings us into the 21st century. It says something that Dvorak's Symphony No. 6 in D major (1880, for the record) overshadowed them both, despite am energetic if unsubtle performance conducted by Michael Stern.

Milhaud's ballet music, scored for a small dance band-like ensemble that uses a saxophone instead of a viola, sounds quaint today, like a pale imitation of 1920s jazz. Maybe the small group just got lost in the big tent. The work has a certain power heard up close. Hartke's concerto, which gave clarinetist Joaquin Valdepeñas a serious workout, was long on atmospherics and short on melody. In the long slow movement, titled "Delta Nights," crickets chirp,  gauzy chords waft by, and the soloist plays snatches of melody. For a piece supposedly grounded in the blues, its communication seemed unexpectedly indirect.

Saturday's recital in Harris Hall by the Brentano Quartet included a world premiere, Steve Mackey's "Groundswell," for viola solo and a nine-piece ensemble of string quartet, piano and winds. In this episodic work the viola, played by Hsin-Yung Huang, chatters away while the ensemble evokes scenes of climbing a mountain. The 22-minute travelogue is not exactly Berlioz's "Harold in Italy," where a viola leads a whole orchestra, nor does it have the grandeur of Strauss' "An Alpine Symphony," which also describes a mountain walk. But the central scene, "Peak Experience," has a certain spaciousness and beauty that's worth getting to, just as climbing a real mountain does.

The Brentano, which brilliantly matches its sound and style to specific composers, did so perfectly with a deft performance of Mozart's String Quartet in B-flat to open the concert. The second half was given over to a vivid, thoughtful reading of the Beethoven String Quartet in E-flat major, one of the sublime late quartets.

Friday also saw the first of the 9 p.m. "Aspen Late" concerts in Harris Hall, this one featuring a The Pablo Ziegler Trio for New Tango. Pianist and composer Ziegler, who played with Astor Piazzola's own band for 10 years, delivered the real thing with the help of a sensational youthful-looking bandoneón player, Héctor del Curto, and a jack-of-all-trades guitarist, Claudio Ragazzi (who had to carry the bass line and play chords and solos). They imbued an 80-minute set of music by Piazzola and Ziegler with plenty of energy and jazz-steeped music that enthralled a sparse but enthusiastic audience.

Pelting rain threatened to scuttle Thursday's "Evening With..." featuring husband and wife violinists Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony. It turned the tent into a loud drum partway through the Dvorak's "Bagatelles," but they took an early intermission and returned, with cellist Michael Mermagen and pianist Joseph Kalichstein, to pick up where the left off. It was still raining. Amplification was turned on, a mixed blessing. The sound system made the piano sound like a cimbalom, and the violins harsh, but at least they could be heard.

The rain softened enough to let the sounds of Brahms' Sextet No. 1 in B-flat major float more naturally. Violists Masao Kawasaki and Catharine Carroll joined cellists Mermagen and Chia-Ling Chien on a rewarding tour of this tasty music.

For sheer musical euphoria, it will be hard to top Thursday night's bass summit meeting between festival regular Edgar Meyer and jazz star Christian McBride. Stewart Oksenhorn's review Saturday went into greater detail, but to me their improvisations demonstrated a musical and personal connection that went beyond technique (which was phenomenal) and musical bravado. One would lay down a creative bass line, and the other would play the tune in what for the bass is the stratosphere. Then they would switch for solos, and the bass line passed seamlessly from one to the other, as if the same player were continuing. That's an ear, that's respect for the other, and it makes for thrilling music.

Harvey Steiman

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