SA Symphony, Judd, Wolfram
An epic retold with compelling authority
March 21, 2009The clouds scudding northward in the Majestic Theater sky shone with unusual brightness during the San Antonio Symphony’s concert of March 20, but they were no match for the luminosity onstage, thanks to pianist William Wolfram and guest conductor James Judd.
Judd drove the orchestra through a tremendous retelling of Jean Sibelius’s explosive Symphony No. 1 of 1899. Wolfram was the hugely impressive soloist in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor. The program began with the world premiere of the cheerfully hectic “Gearbox” by James Syler, who teaches at UTSA.
“Retelling” is the proper term for Judd’s leadership of the Sibelius symphony because the music, in umbral E Minor, has the character of epic -- full of craggy, fantastic landscapes, sudden turns of fortune and shiftings of shape, lonely outposts and boisterous crowds, violent and sentimental incidents. This first of Sibelius’s numbered symphonies is “abstract,” in the sense that there is no literary program attached to it, but musically it has much in common with his vast “Kullervo” choral symphony, an earlier work that interprets scenes from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala.
Judd conducted the Symphony No. 1 with bold strokes that emphasized its brilliant colors and protean theatricality, but his strong lyrical line and brisk tempi also welded the panoply of episodes into a remarkably seamless narrative. The intricacies of the scherzo fell neatly into place. Judd let the finale’s big tune unfold with full Tchaikovskian fervor, but he paid enough attention to what was going on around it to avert a torrent of treacle. The orchestra sounded a bit grittier than usual, not inappropriately for this music, and seemed to enjoy Judd’s go-for-broke approach.
Wolfram’s account of the Beethoven concerto was classical in technique -- admirably clear and incisive, with cleanly delineated ornaments -- and Romantic in breadth. He was equally capable of immense power, most notably in the first movement’s cadenza, and compelling whispers. Most remarkable was the care he took with unprepossessing material, such as the rippling patterns the piano weaves under a dialogue between flute and bassoon (wonderfully enacted by Hye Sung Choe and Sharon Kuster, respectively) in the Largo.
Syler’s “Gearbox” is the good-natured (and much briefer) grandchild of George Antheil’s “Ballet Mecanique,” part of a tradition that draws a musical metaphor from mechanical systems -- in this case, an automotive transmission. The main body of the piece consists of generally speedy, breezy music, transforming in texture like a sports car shifting through its gears. But it opens with a brass fanfare that isn’t very interesting in itself, and that rather muddies the sound when it returns layered with the other material. The main problem with the piece, however, is a tendency to use all or nearly all of the orchestra too much of the time, with paradoxically monochromatic results.
Mike
Greenberg
