SA Symphony, conductor Christopher Seaman
On Scalia, Souter and Salerno-Sonnenberg
June 6, 2010To begin with a completely non-controversial statement: Appearing with the San Antonio Symphony under artistic adviser Christopher Seaman on June 4, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg made Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 her own.
Was it too much her own? Hard to say. The answer may depend on your favorite US Supreme Court justice. If the originalist Antonin Scalia is your guy, you might have been appalled. If you’re a fan of retired Justice David Souter, who advocates a living Constitution, you might have been delighted. The swinging Anthony Kennedy? Who knows?
The analogy is apt because both supreme musicians and Supreme Court justices are often called upon to interpret texts that were composed more than a century ago and apply them to the very different circumstances of the present. Should the texts be taken as a rigid, eternally valid constraint, a historically contingent marker for a timeless underlying principle, or something in between?
Two facts argue against a strict construction of Bruch’s score. The first is that this chestnut’s familiarity invites violinists to play it, and listeners to hear it, on autopilot. It is good on occasion to shake up a standard work, if for no better reason than to make us pay attention. The second is that the Romantic period, of which Bruch’s G-minor concerto is a major exemplar, valorized immediacy and full expression of the passions. Perfect fidelity to a Romantic score might be perfect infidelity to its meaning.
Salerno-Sonnenberg blazed her own trail from the very beginning. The soloist’s first note, a sustained low G, is marked forte in the score; she played it, and the generally ascending passage that follows, as a pianissimo so eerily quiet that it was almost covered by the whoosh of the Majestic Theater’s air-handling system.
But there was a peremptory quality to this pianissimo. It commanded attention more forcefully than most violinists’ full-throated forte. It also altered the emotional charge, made the opening statement more introspective, more subdued than we are accustomed to hearing it. Salerno-Sonnenberg’s highly flexible tempo in this passage occupied the extreme end of the liberty the composer authorized with the indication “ad lib.”
Extremes of tempo and dynamics were the order of the day in this performance -- along with extreme virtuosity, of course, and Salerno-Sonnenberg’s extremely characterful tone. Nothing in this performance seemed gratuitous; there was considerable depth in her solo line. But that depth came with a price. The music did not always hang together well, and some very slow tempos that worked marvelously for the soloist caused the orchestral framework to sag, despite Seaman’s vigorous leadership.
Still, this was a performance to remember, mostly for the right reasons.
By the way, Bruch composed two other violin concertos, Opp. 44 and 58, both of which were in D-minor. Though seldom performed, they have had important champions, including the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin. Op. 44, in particular, is worthy of greater exposure.
Seaman’s every-hair-in-place technique and relaxed tempi sapped some of the roiling wildness from the central allegro of Beethoven’s ”Egmont” Overture, though the concluding pages galloped with giddy excitement.
The concert, and Seaman's two-year tenure as aritstic advisor, closed with a superb account of Edward Elgar’s ingeniously constructed Symphony No. 1. Seaman’s technical prowess kept the somewhat thickly textured score admirably clear, as the Beethoven had been, but the British conductor also revealed an intuitive understanding of this Edwardian-era symphony’s very Edwardian blend of conviviality, audacity, opulence, sentimentality and (let’s be honest) self-importance. The orchestra was in top form.
Mike
Greenberg
