SA Symphony, Komatsu, Wright
A Dvorak Sixth in high style
April 4, 2009Sergei Rachmaninoff’s treacherous Piano Concerto No. 3 ran hot and cold, and Antonin Dvorak’s robust Symphony No. 6 held steady at perfect temperature in the San Antonio Symphony’s concert of April 3 under a cloudless Majestic Theater sky.
The guest conductor (and candidate for music director) was Chosei Komatsu, in his San Antonio début. The concerto soloist was Roger Wright, a Houstonian and a frequent visitor since winning silver (1997) and gold (2003) medals in the San Antonio International Piano Competition.
In apparent confirmation of the maxim that music is the international language, Komatsu, a native of Japan, led the most convincing account of a Dvorak orchestral work that I can recall hearing in San Antonio, not excepting performances led by Czech native Zdenek Macal in the late 1980s. From first to last, Komatsu got the style right -- the vigorous lyricism, the buoyant rhythms, the pointed dynamic contrasts, the lean muscle, the transparent but substantial balances. Fit and finish were first-class all around, yet the performance did not feel overcontrolled, overplanned or overconducted. It just flowed naturally, and it fully deserved the unusually enthusiastic ovation.
Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto is notoriously difficult and has been a favorite vehicle of unnaturally dextrous Romanticists, a category into which Wright fits.
At times, especially in the first half of the opening allegro, Wright’s performance was rather like a house newly moved into and not yet fully inhabited, even though all the furniture is in place. The opening statement, for example, was bland, wanting a bit more point and direction, and the sparkle was muted in some of the brilliant passages, though all were delivered with the requisite speed and accuracy.
Wright came alive in the enormous bifurcated cadenza -- the first part thundering and angular, the sequel delicately wafting and intelligently shaped. Intelligence pervaded the lyrical slow movement, too. A few passages in the finale might have been a little too measured, but for the most part Wright’s musicianship here was high-spirited and aptly playful. Komatsu and the orchestra gave him a sumptuous backdrop.
The concert opened with an attractive 1961 piece by Benjamin Gutierrez of Costa Rica, where Komatsu is music director of the national orchestra. Gutierrez’s Improvisation for String Orchestra is oddly named; it didn’t sound remotely improvisational in this performance. It did sound beautiful, however. The piece begins wistfully, elegiacally, and becomes agitated and perhaps angry before the clouds break and the sun shines. Gutierrez’s piece somewhat recalls the feeling of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, as Komatsu observes in a program note, but the Costa Rican goes much farther in exploiting the ability of tonal harmony to express subtle shifts in emotive weight and content from moment to moment. The orchestra’s strings were in excellent shape in the Gutierrez piece, and throughout the concert.
Mike
Greenberg
