San Antonio Symphony, Prieto, Urioste
When worlds collide, sparks fly
November 13, 2010Mexican conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto returned to the San Antonio Symphony’s podium on Nov. 12 after an absence of five years to lead one of the most adventurous programs -- and one of the most exciting performances -- in recent memory.
The concert opened and closed with music from the 1930s by illustrious Mexican composers -- suites from the Silvestre Revueltas score for the film “Redes” and the Carlos Chavez’s ballet score “Horse Power.” Also from the 1930s was Samuel Barber’s vigorous Symphony No. 1. Reaching back to the first decade of the 20th century, the young American violinist Elena Urioste made her memorable San Antonio début in Alexander Glazunov’s Concerto in A Minor.
Chavez and Revueltas shared two antithetical preoccupations -- the distinctive folk and popular idioms rooted in Mexican tradition and the emerging Modernism that seemingly transcended national cultures. I think it would be fair to say that the Mexican national identity, as it developed during the early 20th century, was a dynamic equilibrium of those two opposing outlooks. Chavez and Revueltas were among the artists of many disciplines who gave expression to that collision of local and global, traditional and progressive, populist and elitist.
I hasten to note that “Redes” and “Horse Power” are not “crossover” mush. Folk and popular idioms appear prominently in both works, but as parts of an exceedingly intricate weave with complex modernist harmonies and textures. The two tendencies take turns occupying the foreground, but they are always implicated in each other.
“Horse Power” is the more ambitious work and, despite its neglect on concert programs, a thoroughly delicious one. Its first movement is rambunctious, a riot of color and rhythmic energy. The second, fluid and lyrical, features a tango infused with pre-Columbian rhythmic elements -- a tlango, perhaps? A fascinating interlude, in which the textures thin out to a wisp and seem almost to shred apart, leads into a finale that begins with an impossibly complex huapango and closes with a broad, stately melody.
The single-movement Barber symphony also represents a dynamic equilibrium, in this case between Romantic and Modern sensibilities. It opens a bit bombastically but redeems itself with astonishing rhythmic vitality and a lyricism that doesn’t (as in some later Barber works) turn treacly. A tranquil section features a broad oboe melody, beautifully played by Mark Ackerman -- after the piece ended, Prieto strode several paces to shake Ackerman’s hand.
Prieto was no less sympathetic to the Barber than to the music from his homeland. He conducted with a splendid sense of line in all three works (and in the Glazunov concerto as well), and with an infectious, even inspiring, way of communicating the feeling in the music.
Ensemble precision was sometimes compromised -- not surprisingly, given the intricate interplay and difficult rhythms in these virtuosic scores -- but the performances were urgent and exciting nonetheless. Top-drawer solo work abounded, with special notice going to principal trumpet John Carroll in the Chavez and Revueltas pieces.
Urioste and her Gagliano violin poured out a huge, gutsy sound, with a focused high register of surpassing sweetness. One sometimes wished for cleaner definition in the pyrotechnic passages, but there was ample compensation in her distinctive tight vibrato, luscious tone and unafraid expressiveness.
Mike
Greenberg
