Joshua Gersen
Veronica Williams
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October 13, 2018
A program of Bohemia and Bernstein brought the return of two familiar guest artists to the San Antonio Symphony, and the local debut of a guest conductor who would not provoke objections from this corner were he to return in the future.
The violinist Augustin Hadelich first visited in 2012 to play a recital for the Tuesday Musical Club. He came back as guest soloist with the symphony in 2016 (the Beethoven concerto) and 2017 (Tchaikovsky), both times under music director Sebastian Lang-Lessing. This time Mr Hadelich’s vehicle was Antonin Dvořák’s Violin Concerto in A Minor, and the conductor was Joshua Gersen, whose day job is assistant conductor with the New York Philharmonic.
One of Mr. Gersen's predecessors in that post was a fellow you might have heard of, Leonard Bernstein, who also dabbled in composition. To mark the centenary of Bernstein’s birth, his Symphony No. 1, Jeremiah, was the major work on the second half, with another familiar face, mezzo-soprano Veronica Williams, the soloist in the final movement. (The locally-sourced Ms. Williams is the symphony’s artist-in-residence and will have several more appearances this season.)The Tobin Center concert opened with Bedřich Smetana’s overture to The
Bartered Bride and closed with three
of Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances.
Mr. Hadelich’s performance in the concerto was a marvel of both technical finesse and interpretive intelligence. He coaxed amazingly sweet, gleaming – and accurate – high notes from his 1723 “Ex-Kiesewetter” Stradivari instrument. His fine control of dynamics and coloration enabled brilliant passages to be not only brilliant, but meaningful. His vibrato was fairly spare, but his strategic application of portamento honored the Romantic style without crossing the line into schmaltz. His account of the adagio’s long-lined melody was direct and sincere. His view of the finale was more sinewy than flashy.
Continuing in A Minor, he rewarded the audience’s ovation with Paganini’s familiar Caprice No. 24, surely one of the most dazzling violin showpieces in the repertoire. Mr. Hadelich dazzled with the best – the left-hand pizzicato variation was especially jaw-dropping – but he always maintained musical integrity.
The Jeremiah Symphony came early in Bernstein’s career. He was just 24 when he composed the bulk of it in 1924, for a competition organized by the New England Conservatory. (It didn’t win.) But the final movement, in which the mezzo-soprano sings passages from Lamentations in Hebrew, originated in a piece for soprano that Bernstein had composed three years earlier. (It turns out that the prophet Jeremiah was not actually the author of Lamentations, but Bernstein couldn’t have known that in 1942.)
Recordings of the work, even those conducted by Bernstein himself, had always left me unpersuaded. This performance made me understand why. Much of the complexity, vivid color and, sometimes, ear-splitting volume of Bernstein’s score really need the acoustical headroom that a great concert hall can provide – and even the best recording technology cannot.
Of course it helped that the orchestra was in top form and the conductor had the requisite chops. Mr. Gersen’s balances revealed the colorings in this score beautifully, and his sense of direction was exemplary – even better, I think, than Bernstein’s in the best of his recordings, from 1962. The middle movement, “Profanation,” was terrifically exciting. In the finale, Ms. Williams projected a rich, lustrous sound and took full advantage of the dramatic peaks. Yet most memorable was a passage in which her voice took on a kind of hollow quality that drove home the despair of the exiles.
Mr. Gersen’s accounts of the Slavonic Dances Nos. 1, 4 and 8 were briskly paced, but the folk rhythms wanted more punch. The Bartered Bride overture flew out of the gate with exhilarating speed, and the energy never flagged. Not many years ago this tempo would have been perilous, especially for the strings, but in this performance the whole band executed with crisp precision.
By the way, Gersen is also a composer, and a pretty good one, to judge by his String Quartet No. 1. You can listen to it on his web site by clicking the link at left. Scroll down to the Soundcloud player.
Mike Greenberg
Gersen String Quartet No. 1
SA Symphony, Joshua Gersen, Augustin Hadelich, Veronica Williams
Splashes of joy, and a Jeremiad
Augustin Hadelich
Photo: Luca Valentina
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