Louisville Orchestra
January 9, 2010 8:00 pm → Brown Theater, Louisville
Strauss – Serenade in E-flat
Schoenberg – Verklärte Nacht
Brahms – Symphony no. 4
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Louisville Orchestra offers rich program
by Andrew Adler
The Courier-Journal
January 9, 2010
There was a definite strategy – both explicit and implicit – to the Louisville Orchestra’s concert Saturday night at the Brown Theatre.
Resident conductor Jason Weinberger guided his listeners through a progression of composers beginning with Richard Strauss, continuing with Schoenberg and ending up with a linchpin of both: Brahms. It was a rich program, intelligently conceived and, for the most part, persuasively executed.
While at its core this Hilliard Lyons Classics Concert was a stylistically conservative affair, there was just enough angularity to lend a bit of intrigue. Much of the off-center content was concentrated amid Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht” [“Transfigured Night”], an early, post-Romantic score that provides few signs of the composer’s later, career-defining serialism.
Though written originally for string sextet, “Verklärte Nacht” is almost always heard in Schoenberg’s own arrangement for string orchestra. Yet despite occupying an important place in the repertoire [and it is among the pieces that legions of undergraduate music students are, at one time or another, obliged to study], the Louisville Orchestra had neglected it until Saturday.
Weinberger had obviously studied the score closely, and his account of the music seethed, soothed and intrigued in all the proper degrees. The players were not always in complete technical sympathy, however, with more than a few textures emerging as approximations instead of precise blocks of sound. “Verklärte Nacht” is a ferocious beast to tackle, and the Brown – which excels at revealing interior detail – shows little mercy for spotty intonation and smudged attacks.
Still, Saturday’s performance was a welcome reminder of how musicwas shifting and swirling along as the 19th century gave way to the 20th. We need to hear these works, and we need to appreciate the context in which they were born. Concerts like Saturday’s are a substantial help in appreciating that perspective.
Nothing about Strauss’s Serenade in E-flat Major, Op. 7 for 13 wind instruments dares to offend – after all, it’s the product of a 17-year-old composer who was finding his way in his world. That much said, the Serenade has its precocious moments and its fundamentally classical outlines [think Mozart] give it intrinsic structural integrity.
Saturday’s reading was lithe and bubbly. The Serenade is not great music. But it is good music, and good music is worth encountering in places like these.
Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 happens to be great music, and because it is so often played, requires more than a respectful going-over to renew its case. There was seldom any doubt that Weinberger took his Brahms soberly. However, far too much of the performance never climbed above that brick-by-brick respectability.
His tempos tended toward the slow to moderate, which gave the players some extra margins in which to gauge attacks, but which sometimes checked vital momentum. This was most evident at the very start of the piece, where string phrases demanded more bite, and especially at the opening of the fourth-movement Allegro. Brahms marks that movement as ‘energico e passionato,’ but both energy and passion were wanting.
I must admit that I prefer my Brahms Fourth to be swift and inexorable, with a final movement that pushes tempos and almost leaps ahead of the beat. Weinberger was a more patient man on Saturday. And judging from the audience’s ovation, he had plenty of sympathy.
Note: All reviews are edited for length and spelling.
