SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Busoni, Strauss, and Schumann: Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz, conductor, James Ehnes, violin, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 4.2.2010 (BJ)


Almost exactly four years ago, reviewing a Seattle Symphony performance of Schumann’s Third Symphony, the “Rhenish,” I commented that the horn section produced “prodigies of strength and accuracy in the many taxing declamatory unisons the composer demands of them.” If anything, John Cerminaro and his section played even more majestically in revisiting the work under Gerard Schwarz’s baton this month, and their delicacy in quiet passages was as impressive as their bigger effects.

Indeed, the performance as a whole served to illustrate once again the relative inaccuracy of the usual judgement that Schumann was a poor orchestrator. Certainly, some of his writing is accident-prone and can sound impenetrably thick if treated carelessly. But Schwarz’s reading showed that a meticulous balancing of lines, coupled perhaps with one or two discreet adjustments, can make this noble symphony shine quite gloriously. The whole orchestra played with unmistakable commitment and skill, and the solemn processional of the fourth movement featured superb contributions from the trumpet and trombone sections led by David Gordon and David Ritt.

This unusually interesting program had begun with the suite from Busoni’s incidental music for Carlo Gozzi’s play Turandot. This is music of powerfully personal character, as incisive and colorful as anything its too often underrated composer produced. More to my taste than Puccini’s much better known and rather glacial opera on the same subject, it received a performance that did it full justice.

In between, we were treated to a rare hearing of Richard Strauss’ Violin Concerto. This, too, though written before the composer reached his 18th birthday, is a work that provides a refreshing change from some 19th-century violin concertos of greater fame, especially when it is played by a soloist of James Ehnes’s prodigal gifts of technique and expression. The first two movements admittedly do not show the mastery Strauss was later to achieve, though one especially lovely feature is a dialogue for solo violin and bassoon that brought some sensitive interplay between Ehnes and Seth Krimsky. But the quicksilver finale can give Mendelssohn’s and Tchaikovsky’s similarly paced finales a run for their money, and it was thrown off by Ehnes with thrilling aplomb and the purest of tone.

Coming just a few days after the conclusion of a protracted and difficult contract negotiation, the settlement of which reflects great credit on the orchestra members, this concert showed the musicians in apparently excellent spirits. There may, for all I know, be rumblings of discontent beneath the amiable public facade, but I prefer to think that board, management, and orchestra can profit from the avoidance of a strike and work together with a renewed commitment to the health of a great institution.

Bernard Jacobson