June 1, 2019
Before he picked up his baton to conduct the San Antonio Symphony concert on May 31, music director Sebastian Lang-Lessing spoke to the audience about the evening’s program, which he characterized as an “hommage to migration and toleration….”
One might hear in that declaration a contrasting theme to the nationalist, anti-immigrant sentiment that lately has been spreading mischief and mayhem where history should have taught the opposite lesson – in the United States, alas, and also across much of Western and Central Europe.
At the moment the illness is most rampant in Hungary, where extreme right-wing parties took a commanding majority in recent national elections. (Leading Hungary’s anti-immigrant drum-beat is prime minister Viktor Orbán, who, not surprisingly, has won the admiration of one Donald J. Trump.) There, the objects of antipathy and fear are not only those recently displaced by war in Syria, but even the Romani, who migrated from northern India a millenium ago and have been integral to Hungarian culture – especially music – for hundreds of years.
Aptly, then, Hungary was the the source or inspiration for the entirety of the concert’s second half – Zoltán Kodály’s brilliant, delightful Háry János Suite and five of Johannes Brahms’ Hungarian Dances. Romani music and musicians – specifically the “Gypsy” violinists who used to roam Hungarian restaurants – found dazzling interpretation in Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane, with the magnificent Vadim Gluzman in the solo role. Mr. Gluzman also was the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d’un lieu cher (Memory of a cherished place), an odd but lovely three-movement work that almost counts as a concerto. The concert opened with George Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 (from a country that is resisting the nationalist virus).
Mr. Gluzman has visited several times previously, but this was his first appearance here since the Tobin Center opened in 2014. One might think that his 1690 Stradivarius (once owned by Leopold Auer) and the H-E-B Performance Hall had been destined for each other since the beginning of time. In this space the instrument projected a huge, resonant, very warm sound and a large palette of colors. Heard in the Majestic Theater, Mr. Gluzman's playing had called forth admiration; in the Tobin, an almost erotic pleasure. On second thought, scratch “almost.” As always, he brought integrity and innate musicality to every phrase, and the fiery middle movement of the Tchaikovsky occasioned some mighty fancy virtuosity. (The “cherished place” of the title was the estate in Ukraine where Tchaikovsky composed the piece; Mr. Gluzman was born in Ukraine.)
Mr. Lang-Lessing, who seems to have a special gift for absorbing the essence of national styles, certainly showed that gift in his vibrant renderings of the rhythms, punctuation and colors of the Enescu and Kodály pieces. Listeners would have been well advised to hold onto their hats near the middle of the Romanian Rhapsody, when the score demanded a sudden shift to very fast and very loud, both of which demands Mr. Lang-Lessing and the orchestra accommodated with unrestrained fervor and extraordinary nimbleness. The story was much the same in the Háry János Suite, one of the increasingly frequent performances in which the San Antonio Symphony, with a budget far below $10 million, played with the polish, unity, and sonic beauty of a $50 million orchestra.
Special huzzahs go to principal viola Allyson Dawkins and guest cimbalom master Christopher Deane for their top-notch solo work in the Kodály. (Mr. Deane had played Háry János with the YOSA Philharmonic just last year.)
Mr. Gluzman will remain in town after the June 1 repeat performance to join San Antonio’s Olmos Ensemble on a program that includes the Schubert Octet, June 3 in Laurel Heights United Methodist Church.
Mike Greenberg
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Vadim GluzmanPhoto: Marco Borggreve
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Migrants welcome
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SA Symphony, SLL, Vadim Gluzman