Berlioz / Sibelius / Tchaikovsky @ Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra
—Wayne Lee Gay
The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra is first out of the gate for the North Texas region's classical season this weekend with a series of repeated concerts at Bass Performance Hall—and music director Robert Spano, guest violin soloist James Ehnes, and the orchestra are all in fine form.
One might object on principal to an all-romantic program of standard repertoire works. In this case, however, the three works from different national schools and different chapters of the romantic era complement and contrast each other nicely. Early romantic French composer Hector Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture displays that composer's mastery of orchestral color, along with his ability to leap effortlessly from Second Empire opulence to sunny Gallic wit and lightness. Finnish composer Jean Sibelius's late romantic Violin Concerto offers a dark-shaded vision loaded with post-Wagnerian harmonies and complex virtuosity. And Russian Peter Tchaikovsky's beloved Sixth Symphony provides an emotional rollercoaster ride from the late nineteenth-century heyday of romanticism.
The Berlioz overture opens the concert with busy orchestral chatter giving way to an extended, lyrical English horn solo, beautifully shaped by the FWSO’s Tim Daniels; throughout the relatively short, neatly episodic work, conductor Spano gives an appropriately broad range to the orchestra, delivering, as the title promises, a festive curtain raiser for the concert and the season. Happily, the strings soar with a rich, clean tone equal to that of the leading American orchestras of our time.
Soloist Ehnes won his position at the front ranks of the violin world with a solid tone and unfailing command of technique, characteristics he combines with a uniquely intelligent, insightful approach to music-making. The Sibelius Concerto demands all three of those elements: in lesser hands, it becomes disjointed and ugly, but under Ehnes, it emerges as a masterpiece.
The soloist's entrance can be particularly problematic: the instruction in the score of mezzo forte; dolce ed espressivo ("moderately loud; sweetly and expressively") demands a special quality of controlled assertiveness. While romantic concertos often open with bombastic fireworks, Sibelius here wants an approach that is assertive but not overtly so, easily (and often) spoiled by too much or too little as a simple tune becomes, in a matter of seconds, complex and passionate.
Ehnes, however, produces that introduction perfectly, and continues in the same vein throughout. He finds the necessary intensity both in the brilliant cadenza that dominates the first movement, and in the fluid slow movement—and he bounds easily through the devil's dance of the finale. Conductor Spano and the orchestra provide the perfectly balanced canvas on which Ehnes paints his reading of the work. It's worth observing that too often in other performances of the Sibelius Concerto the slow movement seems too long and the final movement too short. Here, Sibelius' architecture, if somewhat asymmetrical, feels perfect.
At Friday night's performance, an enthusiastic crowd demanded two encores, and Ehnes, with his characteristic combination of intellect and imagination, responded first with with the complete (and succinctly encore-length) Violin Sonata No. 3 of the Belgian romantic violinist Eugene Ysaÿe. An obvious homage to J.S. Bach's solo violin sonatas, the Ysaÿe begins somberly before expanding into a flurry of lyric melody and complex double stops—in other words, a perfect showcase for Ehnes. When the audience cheered for more, Ehnes responded with a lyrical movement from Bach's Violin Sonata No. 3, magically combining, in Ehnes' rendition, modern and baroque sensibilities.
After intermission comes that monument of high romanticism, Tchaikovsky's beloved "Pathétique" Symphony. Overperformed and overly familiar? Maybe. But I always find myself emotionally captivated by Tchaikovsky's injection of intense, wide-ranging emotions into a skillfully managed traditional structure.
Conductor Spano clearly knows how to ride through this musical hurricane. He opens the first movement with admirable restraint, only gradually, in the second iteration of the heart-rending principal theme, allowing the full force of Tchaikovsky's passion to bloom. Likewise, in the second movement, with its juxtaposition of a lilting waltz theme over a lopsided 5/4 meter (as opposed to the traditional 3/4 waltz time), Spano allows the subtle uneasiness to creep up on the listener. In the triumphal march that follows, Spano once again carefully shepherds the orchestra's resources, gradually pulling the listener forward to that grand apotheosis.
It's always interesting to observe how a conductor handles the transition from the jubilant third movement to the mournful fourth in this work. Some conductors choose to segue without pause into the finale, halting a natural tendency of audiences to burst into applause. Spano allows the smattering of applause, then calmly waits for complete silence before moving into the sublime moment of resignation, recognizable to anyone who has experienced the inevitable sorrows of a complete life. Dvořák, Brahms, Mahler, and Bruckner may all lay claim to the crown of romantic symphonists, but, at that one point, in a perfect reading such as Spano's, Tchaikovsky is the master.
WHEN: September 7-8, 2024
WHERE: Bass Performance Hall, Fort Worth
WEB: fwsymphony.org
