San Antonio Symphony, Kamensek, Gomyo
Ives, on the way to becoming Ives
January 26, 2013Charles Ives composed his Second Symphony somewhere along the road between German Romanticism and American Modernism. Despite the many pleasures of the San Antonio Symphony’s handsomely made account of the work under guest conductor Karen Kamensek, Jan. 25 in the Majestic Theater, Ives’s music kept prompting the question: Are we there yet?
The concert’s centerpiece was Edouard Lalo’s lush “Symphonie espagnole” for violin and orchestra, with Karen Gomyo the impressive soloist. The opener was Emmanuel Chabrier’s seldom heard “Fête polonaise” from the opera “Le Roi malgré lui.”
The Second has always been, to my ears, the least appealing of Ives’s four symphonies. In the First he had shown considerable deftness and assurance in a conservative idiom. He reached full maturity in the Third (“The Camp Meeting”), with its layers of Americana couched in a fresh harmonic language appropriate to the material. And in the astonishing Fourth, his distinctive, exploratory genius was in full flower.
Compared to those other symphonies, the Second seems more an intellectual exercise, a proof of concept, than a finished product. Ives’s bizarre juxtapositions and layerings of borrowed materials looked forward to a music that reflected the brash, polydirectional American character, but the orchestration, largely situated in the styles of both Wagner and Brahms, undercut the new.
The thick textures of this music can sound muddy, but Ms. Kamensek’s careful balances maintained a high degree of clarity throughout. A widely experienced opera conductor -- she was recently appointed music director of Germany’s Staatsoper Hannover -- she seemed particularly sympathetic to the score’s Wagnerian stretches.
Superb solo work was contributed by oboist Mark Ackerman, cellist Kenneth Freudigman, flutist Martha Long and hornists Jeff Garza (principal) and Peter Rubins. And thanks to a lockout in a labor dispute a few miles up I-35, Minnesota Orchestra principal horn Michael Gast, a San Antonio Symphony alumnus, was taking a busman’s holiday as Mr. Garza’s assistant.
Ms. Gomyo impressed immediately in the Lalo with her brilliant, focused high register, her emphatic diction and her imperious downbows. Her open-throated tone had an uncommonly vocal quality that served particularly well in the slow movement. She dashed off the finale’s fireworks with crisp precision.
Chabrier isn’t often represented on concert programs, although Austin Lyric Opera mounted a splendid production of his charming “L’etoile” in 2010.
The “Fête polonaise,” which I hadn’t heard before, proved an agreeable bit of froth, especially with Ms. Kamensek’s very pointed dance rhythms.
Mike Greenberg
