SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Coming at the end of the evening, Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5 cast a bright and somewhat unforgiving light on the other 20-century symphony that had begun the program. This was the fourth and last symphony by Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994).

 

Lutoslawski was celebrated in the program note as “the elder statesman of the remarkable school of Polish composers that emerged during the third quarter of the last century.” The description is accurate in a sense, but only because Andrzej Panufnik–in my opinion a much greater composer–had fled the country to live out his last 37 years in England, and his music was proscribed in his native land until the fall of Communism. Certainly, the surface of Lutoslawski’s music is as lustrous and brilliant as anything to be found in the music of our time. With Panufnik, by contrast, the impression on the listener is very different, for there is no surface in his music at all, but rather a sense of absolute homogeneity fusing invention and treatment, line and texture, content and form.

 

Lutoslawski’s handling of the orchestra, admittedly, was assured to start with, and grew breathtakingly so over the years. The textures shone in the performance Danish guest conductor Thomas Dausgaard drew from the orchestra on this occasion–there were radiant and passionate string cantilenas, sinuous woodwind solos, incisive interventions by the brass, vehement percussion outbursts–and these elements are interwoven by the composer with consummate artifice. I say “artifice” rather than “artistry” because it is with the manner of their interweaving that I have problems. There is an element of contrivance about the whole enterprise. I cannot discern the logic in it. Or rather, there is certainly logic, but it is not a natural logic, and so in the end we are left with the impression of just one fascinating thing after another.

 

The structure of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, by contrast, is utterly cogent. Every moment leads inexorably to the next, across the pauses between the three movements, in the kind of unbroken arc that is missing from the Lutoslawski. In Dausgaard’s masterly performance this effect was all the more remarkable given that the conductor’s shaping of Sibelius’s work seemed to aim at making it less monolithic than usual. He offered little nuances, little touches of fantasy, that illuminated the whole without undermining its strength of form.

 

At the same time, there were one or two oddities of rhythm–the little wind figures that gradually coalesce at the start of the first movement were phrased rather prosaically–and some balances that were, I will not say wrong, but idiosyncratic. It must have been frustrating for the flutes not to be allowed to sing their variation theme in the slow movement with a bit more eloquence. Still, this was a distinguished interpretation, and the orchestra played splendidly all evening. with notable contributions from clarinetist Laura DeLuca, from Scott Goff, David Gordon, and Ko-ichiro Yamamoto on flute, trumpet, and trombone, and from the fine horn section led by Mark Robbins.

 

Inevitably, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 4 took a back seat in musical interest to the two symphonies. In the first movement, a little scrap of tune in the cellos is almost the only invention of genuinely personal melodic interest. Once we reach the slow movement, Rachmaninoff’s vein of melancholy nostalgia takes over to charming effect, and here, as throughout the work, Arnaldo Cohen was his familiar polished, sensitive, and technically adroit self.

 

Bernard Jacobson

 

Parts of this review appeared also in the Seattle Times.