SA Symphony with James Galway:
The piper must be paid, but by whom?
February 16, 2008One of the most disturbing experiences I have ever known in a theater occurred during the San Antonio Symphony's Majestic Theater concert on Friday, a few minutes before the end of John Corigliano's "Pied Piper" Fantasy. The venerable flutist James Galway, for whom the piece was composed more than a quarter-century ago, took the title role, assisted by a brigade of local youngsters playing flutes and drums.
Everyone knows the story, based on a 14th-century German legend and possibly on some actual event that is lost to history. A stranger offers to rid Hamelin of its rats for 1,000 florins. He leads the rats to drown in the river, but the politicians renege on their deal. The piper gets revenge by luring away the town's children, who are never seen again.
Corigliano's score, glisteningly played by Galway and the orchestra and conducted with crisp authority by Craig Kirchoff, reflects the darkness of the tale with dramatically pointed music. The scene is set with a portentous canvas of wrenching dissonances, quiet at first and then plangent. The piper -- Galway wearing a red and yellow cloak and cap based on Kate Greenaway's illustrations for Robert Browning's verse version of the tale -- announces himself with a long, virtuosic flute solo that ends with a sinister, snake-like figure. (He's a businessman, not a philanthropist.) The rats begin to stir with a quiet scratching of double basses, and the trickle becomes a flood of violent orchestral color. With the drowning of the rats the harmonic atmosphere lightens, becoming almost consonant. The politicians congratulate themselves with a parodistic processional in Renaissance style. When the grandees refuse to pay the piper, he plays bright, happy music on a tin whistle, and the children answer with flute trills from the rear of the hall. As he continues to play, they march down the aisles to the stage. Then Galway pipes them cheerfully off, into oblivion.
And that is when, perversely, the audience applauded.
Well, OK, I understand why. The kids had done a nice job, and they were, you know, cute. The audience wasn't thinking about the narrative context. Which, in a sense, is the whole point of the narrative context: In the old German legend, as too often in contemporary reality, children are the unconsidered victims of self-important adults and their disputes and fantasies. And how vigorously we applaud -- they're so cute, especially if they're wearing uniforms -- when the piper marches them off to oblivion. Hey, leader, strike up the band.
The children with their flutes and drums disappeared, the applause ended, and the desolate, dissonant music of the beginning returned to close the piece.
Galway did his job with ample technical chops and theatrical flair. His tone was rich and full, with a wide vibrato. Before the Corigliano, his wife, flutist Jeanne Galway, joined him in Domenico Cimarosa's Concerto in G for Two Flutes and Orchestra. She projected a somewhat narrower tone, but her technique was assured. The performance as a whole seemed disengaged, however, and one often had the feeling that there was more to be had from this charming, Haydnesque score. A joint encore of Mozart's Rondo alla Turca went swimmingly.
The concert opened with former Trinity University composer Frank Ticheli's "Pacific Fanfare," a brilliantly colored, celebratory piece for winds and percussion. One of its themes, made from rising fifths, brought to mind the tender side of Aaron Copland, whose "Tender Land" Suite followed. Kirchoff's shaping of tempos and phrases infused the latter with apt feeling, though ensemble was often imprecise, and the strings sounded forced.
Individual honors for spirited, confident solo work go to principal clarinet Ilya Shterenberg and to his section mate Rodney Wollam on bass clarinet in the Corigliano.
Mike
Greenberg
