incident light
Portrait of Felix Mendelssohn by James Warren Childe, 1839. Below: Franz Berwald.
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Mendelssohn’s Elijah and . . . who?
music
October 28, 2017
All concerned did such fine, spirited,
committed work that there was really
only one significant shortcoming to
report in the San Antonio Symphony’s
performance on Oct. 27 of Felix
Mendelssohn’s Elijah. That
shortcoming would be … Felix
Mendelssohn’s Elijah.
First performed in Birmingham,
England, in 1846, this interminable
oratorio relates episodes in the life of
the (probably fictional) Ninth Century
BCE Israelite prophet. The work has
been performed with some frequency
ever since, mainly in English-speaking
countries with a strong choral
tradition. Elijah gives large community
choruses plenty to do, and the
choristers’ relatives can be depended
upon to fill seats. Said relatives did not,
it seems, keep their part of the bargain
on Friday night: The Tobin Center’s
H-E-B Performance Hall was only
half-filled. The row ahead of mine in
the balcony was entirely empty, and
my row of 44 seats would have been
empty had I not been duty-bound to
attend.
Granted, there are musical felicities in
Elijah, mainly in the choral writing,
which is often inventive and dramatic.
The drama, however, is always
attenuated by Mendelssohn’s
conservative style and politesse, traits
that probably accounted for his
popularity in Victorian times. Too
much of the music is a bland wash of
fusty reverence and sentimentality.
One can hear echoes of Handel and
Bach, both of whom Mendelssohn
admired, but the bold theatricality of
the former and the harmonic
adventurism of the latter are seldom
approached in Elijah. Music director
Sebastian Lang-Lessing wrested as
much excitement as he could from the
score, but there wasn’t a lot he could
do while remaining faithful to the
Mendelssohn style.
Of the vocal solos, only the tenor aria
“If with all your hearts” has a life
outside the oratorio itself, and it was
stirringly, beautifully sung here by Kang Wang. The most musically
persuasive aria is Elijah’s “It is enough, O Lord,” with genuine feeling in its strong, almost Bellinian melodic contours and lovely accompaniment by the cellos. We had a first-rate Elijah in bass-baritone Steven LaBrie, with a powerful, focused instrument and an ardent, intelligent way with the text. Soprano Rebecca Nash produced thrilling, glossy high notes, although she had a tendency to scoop. Mezzo-soprano Ewa Plonka sang with admirable steadiness and accuracy, though a little less power than her colleagues.
The Mastersingers chorus, prepared by John Silantien, was in excellent form: The blend was smooth, all four sections were strong, and ensemble was generally clean. The hall’s resonance-dampening curtains were not deployed, as they should be for opera and choral works, so the words sung by the chorus were not very clear, but maybe that’s all to the good.
The text is indeed one of the problems with Elijah. The worst of it, especially in the present political climate, is the sequence in which Elijah, representing the Hebrew god, challenges the prophets of Baal to a duel, as it were. The “my god can beat your god” nonsense is as trivial as a high school football rivalry, but a hell of a lot more dangerous, for the whole world.
If Mendelssohn was celebrated in his own time and ever afterward, his Swedish near-contemporary Franz Berwald (1796-1868) labored in obscurity and has pretty much stayed there. He made his living as a surgeon and, later in life, as manager of a sawmill and a glass factory. But he could be the poster boy for the unjustly neglected.
The Olmos Ensemble opened its all-Scandinavian Oct. 23 concert in Laurel Heights United Methodist Church with Berwald’s first published work, the Quartet in E-flat for clarinet (Ilya Shterenberg), bassoon (Sharon Kuster), horn (Jeff Garza) and piano (guest artist Jeffrey Sykes). The piece was a revelation. It was composed in 1819 and shows some influence of Beethoven, but the bright, tingly harmonies anticipate Carl Nielsen by nearly a century – a bit more than that in the case of the Danish composer’s brilliant Wind Quintet (1922), which closed this concert. The music lives on the edge of the early Romantic period’s common practice, continually violating harmonic, melodic and structural expectations, but maintaining a consistent and convincing point of view. The counterpoint might be a little overdecorated, and this is not music of great depth, but it is delightful – those long, pregnant pauses in the finale! – and it got a splendid performance here.
Berwald is worth exploring by other ensembles, including the San Antonio Symphony. He wrote four intriguing symphonies, all dating from the early 1840s. The sparkling No. 4 (also in E-flat) certainly deserves a place in the standard repertoire. Its sophisticated craft belies its subtitle, “Sinfonie naïve.”
Mark Teplitsky (flute) and Paul Lueders (oboe) joined Mr. Shterenberg, Ms. Kuster and Mr. Garza in the Nielsen Quintet, a performance whose taut unity, polish and rhythmic alertness met the highest international standard.
Between Berwald and Nielsen, Eric Gratz (violin) joined Mr. Sykes in a sonically and interpretively warm, deeply engaged account of Edvard
Grieg’s Violin Sonata No. 3.
Mike Greenberg
San Antonio Symphony; Olmos Ensemble