SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Donizetti, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, and Strauss: Stefan Farkas (English horn), Tianwa Yang (violin), Emily Hindrichs (soprano), Elizabeth Pojanowski (mezzo-soprano), Erich Parce (baritone and narrator), Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 7.5.2009 (BJ) 

Donizetti: Concertino for English Horn in G major (1816)
Ravel: Tzigane
Saint-Saëns: Havanaise
Strauss: Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, op.60

The most rewarding music in this varied Seattle Symphony came after intermission: Gerard Schwarz conducted the music Strauss composed for Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, including the vocal numbers, together with a sufficiency of narration and a few touches of staging mostly focused on costume. Emily Hindrichs, Elizabeth Pojanowski, and Erich Parce sang their relatively modest parts well, and Parce was also a vivid narrator (though he shouldn’t pronounce the word “a” as a long vowel–viz., “ay”). 

The orchestral contribution did justice to the work, both in Strauss’s ingeniously varied ensemble passages, and with some fine solo playing from principal horn John Cerminaro, guest concertmaster Ani Kavafian, and guest principal cellist Doug Davis. Susan Gulkis Assadi, too, provided a characteristically sumptuous viola solo. 
The first half of the program had focused on some pretty slim musical pickings. It’s understandable that an english-horn player should want to play the concerto Donizetti wrote for the instrument, since there isn’t much else for it in the repertoire, and the orchestra’s Stefan Farkas played it extremely well, but the piece really is rather devoid of real inspiration. And Ravel’s Tzigane, followed by Saint-Saëns’s Havanaise, hardly offered much opportunity to judge whether 21-year-old Tianwa Yang, an obviously gifted purveyor of brilliant technical effects, is also a musician. (Incidentally, the Spanish word for the dance Saint-Saëns was writing is “habanera,” not “habañera” as the program-note consistently misspelled it.) 

Ms. Yang did indeed play brilliantly, and she comported herself on stage with great charm. But she missed the chance to show whether she commands any serious musical substance by choosing the equally inconsequential finale from Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 4 as her encore. Let us please hear her next time in some real music. 

Bernard Jacobson

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