SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL CONCERT REVIEW
 

Bartók and Schoenberg: Deborah Polaski (soprano), Pierre Boulez (conductor), The MET Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, New York City, 16.5.2010 (BH)

 

Bartók: The Wooden Prince, Op. 13 (1917)

Schoenberg: Erwartung, Op. 17 (1909)

 

At 85, Pierre Boulez generates enough light and heat to shame many conductors half his age, and this thrilling afternoon at Carnegie Hall was just the latest evidence. Leading the MET Orchestra for the first time, it seemed that the amount of sound generated was in inverse proportion to his podium movement; a tiny gesture caused the ensemble to explode. Certainly Bartók’s The Wooden Prince demonstrated his talents, and those of the musicians, to luscious advantage.

It’s hard to speculate why this score isn’t played more often, containing vast reserves of lyricism tempered with biting Bartókian folk rhythms. Yes, the story is a little weird: a prince tries to attract the attention of a princess by creating a wooden version of himself—only to find that the princess seems to prefer the puppet. (Not to worry: a happy ending is in store.) And at just under an hour, some may find the ebb and flow a bit too much of a good thing.

But the payoff is huge, showing off the resources of a massive orchestra to delirious effect, and Boulez and the MET musicians made the most of every page. Florid climaxes bloomed extravagantly, before being neatly extinguished; few conductors make clean attacks and cutoffs seem so effortless. Boulez is also a master at scores ripe with barely contained intensity, and I could feel the goose bumps during some of the composer’s silvery onslaughts. Bartók makes liberal use of saxophone, trombone, and xylophone, all placed against a ravishing backdrop of strings.

About halfway through, I was wondering how the program might have fared if the program order had been reversed. But after intermission, when towering soprano Deborah Polaski strode onstage to begin Schoenberg’s Erwartung, she answered the question: it’s never a bad idea to place the more intense experience last. The half-hour tale is eerie: a woman is lost in a forest, feverishly searching for her lover, and after several false starts, she eventually finds him dead. Like her emotions, the music seems in constant turmoil: brooding one moment before suddenly lashing out. Some of the orchestral climaxes are terrifying.

Polaski’s voice is perhaps ideal for this work: Wagnerian in power, coupled with heroic accuracy, and almost always able to be heard above Schoenberg’s most bone-rattling climaxes. In 2006, James Levine led the orchestra in this same work at Carnegie, with the great Anja Silja as soloist. Silja’s slightly frayed instrument paid huge interpretive dividends; one had the uncanny sensation that she had been looking for her paramour for hundreds of years.

But there was no denying Polaski’s overwhelming force, coupled with the equally vehement, unfettered wall of sound from the orchestra—yet she was equally memorable in the final moments, almost whispered, “Oh, bist du da…Ich suchte...” (“Oh, are you here…I was seeking…”). Then, in one of the most extraordinary endings in the repertory, the orchestra rises up in an ascending scale that is abruptly cut off, which Boulez dispatched with nonchalant precision.

 

Bruce Hodges