San Antonio Symphony, Lang-Lessing, Gluzman
Modest Beethoven, immodest Strauss
June 4, 2011Understatement and overstatement shared the bill in the San Antonio Symphony’s season closer under music director Sebastian Lang-Lessing.
The concert, June 3 in the Majestic Theater, opened with Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D, a work that’s more contemplative than showy, with a solo performance of rare integrity by violinist Vadim Gluzman. After intermission came Richard Strauss’s enormous tone poem “Also sprach Zarathustra.”
Strauss himself asserted that he intended “Zarathustra” as an “homage” to Friedrich Nietzsche and a musical interpretation of the philosopher’s concept of human development. I would argue that the score is really about the conditions that made its première possible in Germany in 1896 -- the rise of the industrial state and an entrepreneurial class with the power to command and coordinate huge resources.
Strauss’s instrumentation calls for more than 100 players, including 64 strings. (Even with nearly two-dozen non-roster reinforcements, this performance made do with a mere 96 players, including 56 strings.) There’s a lot of complicated stuff going on, layers upon layers of intricate interplay. The same could be said of other Strauss tone poems, but in “Zarathustra” the complications sometimes outrun their musical purpose. Much of the music is thrilling, but some is irredeemably turgid.
As we’ve come to expect from Mr. Lang-Lessing, the performance was high-definition, seamless, pointedly detailed and smartly paced (apart from a draggy bit right after the famous “2001: A Space Odyssey” introduction). As in previous concerts, he paid special attention to the low strings. Mr. Lang-Lessing’s care for letting every line be heard, normally a plus, had a down side in this case: Parts of “Zarathustra” sounded even more overstuffed than usual.
The orchestra played handsomely and nimbly, with fine solo work all around, but especially from concertmaster Ertan Torgul.
In the Beethoven concerto, Mr. Gluzman projected a big, bright, textured and very sweet sound, a classic Stradivarius sound. There was a welcome absence of funny business and ego in his interpretation. His playing was, first of all, accurate in rhythm and aim, but that is not to suggest that it was mechanical. A distinctive (and winsome) personality emerged in the details of color, articulation and phrasing. His tempos in the outer allegros were fairly direct, but he took the slow movement with ample freedom and with beautifully shaded dynamics. The result was riveting.
Beethoven didn’t write cadenzas for this concerto (although he did for a version he created for piano and orchestra). Numerous other composers and violinists have supplied options to fill the breach. Mr. Gluzman chose the ones by the great violinist Nathan Milstein. (I didn’t recognize the cadenzas, but I did recognize KPAC-FM announcer John Clare in the lobby, and he of course knew their origin.)
Mr. Lang-Lessing and the orchestra did a super job in the concerto as well. Some dynamics were startling -- but not startling to Beethoven, who wrote them that way. Most conductors just don’t fully express them.
Mike
Greenberg
