SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Purcell, Britten and Shostkovich: Ian Bostridge (tenor), Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Bernard Haitink, Symphony Center, Chicago 8.5.2009 (JLZ)

Purcell: Funeral Music for Queen Mary (arranged and elaborated by Steven Stucky)
Britten: Les Illluminations, op.18
Shostakovich: Symphony no. 15 in A major, op.141

The works selected for the recent series of concerts conducted by principal conductor Bernard Haitink resulted in a wonderfully integrated whole. While the tradition of English music did not start with Purcell, his name is associated with that national style. Steven Stucky’s modern scoring of Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary brings the sensibilities of a modern composer to the ceremonial music for the passing of the late seventeenth-century monarch. Stucky’s arrangement for woodwinds, brass, and percussion evokes a modern perspective on Purcell with its sometimes stark timbres.
           
In contrast to the scoring of the Purcell work, the next piece in the program, Britten’s Les Illuminations is for tenor and string orchestra, with the woodwinds, brass, and percussion conspicuously absent. At the same time, the juxtaposition of these two composers calls to mind the famous reworking of Purcell’s music from Abdelazar in Britten’s well-know Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. Yet with Les Illuminations, Britten created a remarkably effective setting of selected parts of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud’s collection of the same title.  With the epigraph “J’ai seul la clef de cette parade, de cette parade sauvage” (“I alone have the key to this wild parade”), Britten arrived at a compositional and interpretive motto for approaching the evocative poetry in his equally moving settings. Ian Bostridge, who is known for his interpretation of Les Illuminations gave not only the motto, but the entire cycle his distinctive stamp. Bostridge’s diction and phrasing emerged well, despite the sometimes sonorous accompaniment. The rapid-fire articulations necessary for Villes (“Towns”) made such places as Lebanon and the Alleghenies seem exotic. Likewise, he used a more sustained tone for Strophe, one of the shorter settings, a work which is demanding for the higher tessitura which Bostridge essayed with ease. In a similar way, his nicely separated approach to some of the lines in Antique (“Antiquity”) reflected the image of the verses of the chitara. Bostridge gave each part of the cycle the attention to detail and the nuanced tone required, with the nicely ironic sense of Royauté present not only in the music, but also his sense of timing. One effective touch was the body-language Bostridge used in Interlude, a piece which is essentially orchestral, and by facing the ensemble, rather than the audience, the singer directed attention appropriately without detracting from the place where he reprises the epigraph of the work. It was a fine performance of Britten’s important song cycle, which received a masterful sense of detail from Haitink. This most recent performance of Les illuminations by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was the latest in a series of fine interpreters of the work, which includes Peter Pears (1968) and Dawn Upshaw (2001), and in his command of the work Bostridge demonstrated the enduring power of the music. His delivery was as natural as it was musically compelling.
           
Britten’s epigraph for Les illuminations (“J’ai seul la clef de cette parade“) fits well the final piece on the program, Shostakovich’s Symphony no.15, because of the quotations and other references which are part of the work. The deft and subtle inclusion of such ideas emerged well in this performance by the Chicago Symphony under Haitink’s leadership. The first movement was particularly effective because of the energetic approach Haitink brought to the piece, and it served as a foil for the monumental slow movement which followed. The cello solo by John Sharp was impressive, and it fit well into the compositional framework of the larger structure. In a sense the slow movement set the stage for the majestic Finale of Shostakovich’s last symphony. With his sense of musical line and dramatic pacing, Haitink gave the Finale a solid and convincing reading. All in all, the mastery of the work by the Chicago Symphony, which recorded the piece around a decade ago under Sir Georg Solti, as well as the finesse Haitink contributed resulted in a memorable performance. If the quotations of the Trauermarsch from Götterdämmerung conveyed a sense of drama to the Finale, the evocations of gestures associated with funeral music, made tangible the inclusion of Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary in this program. Likewise, the inclusion of music by Britten in this program paid homage to the professional relationship between the two composers during their lifetimes. While these and other details emerged readily, the overall effect of Shostakovich’s score was evident in the concentration of the audience on the final notes of the piece. The innovative programming was matched by its impressive execution of two important works of the twentieth century.

Jim Zychowicz 

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