San Antonio Symphony, Kolja Blacher
Appeals to the heart, the gut and the mind
November 19, 2011A disparate San Antonio Symphony program of Mozart, Berg and Rachmaninoff was unified by the consummate craft of music director Sebastian Lang-Lessing, Nov. 18 in the Majestic Theatre.
The centerpiece was Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, completed shortly before he died in 1935. The sterling soloist, in his San Antonio debut, was German violinist Kolja Blacher. Mr. Lang-Lessing and the orchestra opened with a vigorous, muscularly elegant account of the overture to Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.” They closed with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s opulent Symphony No. 2. A few extra violinists and violists were brought in for both the Berg and the Rachmaninoff.
Berg’s concerto holds a unique place in 20th-century music history. Among all the orchestral works composed in serial technique (the “method of composing with 12 tones,” first developed by Berg’s teacher, Arnold Schoenberg), this concerto has attained widest acceptance and appreciation among concert audiences. It has been a rarity on local programs, however. San Antonio Symphony librarian Greg Vaught reports the most recent, and apparently only, performance was given by violinist Millard Taylor under guest conductor Walter Hendl on Nov. 26, 1964.
An elegy for the 18-year-old young daughter of Berg’s friends Walter Gropius (the important Modernist architect) and Alma Mahler (Gustav Mahler's widow), this two-movement concerto is suffused with delicate, haunting, inexhaustible beauty in both the solo and the orchestral parts.
The music sounds less alien to traditionalist ears than many other serial works, in part because the 12-tone row that Berg devised to generate most of the musical material has tonal implications. Several sequences of three notes are familiar major or minor triads, and the last four, directly quoting the start of JS Bach’s chorale melody “Es ist genug,” are part of an ascending whole-tone scale. Thus, as the music progresses, hints of traditional tonality emerge, like flashes of memory, along with an echo of the whole-tone scale favored by Claude Debussy. The influence of Debussy might be heard also in Berg’s shimmering orchestration, with its constantly shifting colors.
Mr. Blacher essayed the work with complete integrity. His vibrato was understated but very beautiful, his low register richly grained, his high register brilliant, sweet and accurate. He brought full dramatic urgency to the second movement’s technically demanding opening allegro. In calmer, lyrical passages, he was perhaps a shade less emotionally extrovert than some might wish, but he was altogether true to the spirit of a piece that bears its heavy heart in its chest, not on its sleeve.
Mr. Lang-Lessing’s handing of the orchestra was a miracle of carefully weighed balances and cinematic cross-dissolves. The integration of all sections of the orchestra into a single sonic unit was revelatory. Mr. Blacher followed suit, often fitting into the oveall texture rather than riding above it.
Rachmaninoff’s beloved Symphony No. 2 benefited from similar treatment and argued forcefully that the composer was highly sophisticated in his counterpoint and orchestration. In the more familiar passages for lush strings, the high-fructose corn syrup cannot be denied, and Mr. Lang-Lessing wisely let it gush forth without shame. The adagio floated gently, patiently, estatically. As in Berg, the conductor's amazing balances and thoughtful tempo choices underscored how marvelously constructed this music is. “Rocky II,” as this symphony is sometimes called, always appeals to the viscera; it was nice to hear it also appealing to the mind.
Among the memorable solo contributions -- Lee Hipp’s rock-solid pedal point on tuba in the first movement; Ilya Shterenberg’s gorgeous clarinet melody opening the third; and, also in the third movement, the dialogue between veteran Mark Ackerman oboe and young Danny Rios on English horn -- proud teacher and gifted student. Mr. Rios, a substitute, projected an astonishingly full-throated, ripe, warm tone. The Rachmaninoff also was the final performance of principal flutist Tallon Perkes, whose beautiful tone has graced the orchestra for 18 years. He is leaving to pursue a career in architecture.
A first violinist swooned (literally) during the third movement of the Rachmaninoff. The music continued while she and her instrument were carried off-stage by three of her colleagues. Restored to consciousness, she emerged from the wings after the Rachmaninoff and got a hug from Mr. Lang-Lessing.
Mike
Greenberg
