Mussorgsky’s Pictures @ The Dallas Symphony Orchestra
—Gregory Sullivan Isaacs
There was a missed opportunity at the May 27 concert presented by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Principal guest conductor Gemma New appeared at the side of the Meyerson stage to make some announcements. Crisp and pleasant, she briefly mentioned what was on the program, promoted the next season, then left the stage.
No mention was made of the tragedies that surround us, in our own state and as far away as Ukraine. Yet the program lent itself organically as a way to note and honor them.
The program opener by Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy (a U.S. premiere) is called Memoria, and seemed tailor-made to contemplate these deadly events. In the program notes Dennehy, who attended the performance, writes that “…more than ever we have been made aware of the fragility, preciousness, and precariousness of life itself.” Furthermore, the program ended with an obvious connection to current events: Moussorgsky’s magnificent Pictures at an Exhibition concludes with a musical portrait of The Great Gate of Kiev. It’s a spectacular tribute to a city we have come to know, and altogether remarkable for its sense of strength and dignity.
In Memoria, Dennehy creates harmonic planes of existence that start out wispy and ill-defined but build to some solid and crashing chords before retreating. Although such ephemeral music isn’t steady fare, the audience seemed attentive and appreciative and gave the composer a warm, but seated reaction. New’s tendency to be in the moment didn’t serve Dennehy’s piece very well; it came off as a series of musical moments, rather than a progression to a destination.
Maurice Ravel’s Rapsodie Espagnole was his first published piece (1908) and has been a favorite performance piece ever since. It is a four-movement work that creates an effective sonic portrait of Spanish heritage. The French composer’s Spanish influence came from his early childhood: he was born in the Basque town of Ciboure, just a few miles from the Spanish border.
The work is a magnificent example of the French school of composition called Impressionism. As the name implies, it is all about conveying the emotion and mood of a subject. Ravel uses Spanish musical elements that seem to float over a non-specific harmonic home. For example, the work opens with a four-note descending scale pattern that is neither major nor minor (see note below) and is repeated in one form or another throughout all four movements.
New’s non-specific baton technique got her in trouble right from the beginning. Ravel offsets his four descending notes by moving them one beat forward in the measure; the downbeats do not always coincide with the beginning of the four-note pattern. It takes concentration to keep your place, as the start of the melodic fragment does not always land on the traditional downbeat. Occasionally, she seemed lost and resorted to vague baton movement, though the orchestra kept things going.
After intermission, we were treated to a work by Percy Aldridge Grainger, “Pastoral,” from his In a Nutshell Suite. The renowned composer and concert pianist was born in Australia but spent considerable time in many countries, including the United States. He was a fan of the world’s folk music, and frequently used such tunes in his compositions. Oddly, though, he insisted that absolutely no actual folk tunes are re-purposed in this suite. Perhaps Grainger felt the need to state this because the tonality and rhythms of folk music had become such a part of his compositional voice, whether they literally appeared or not.
The Pastoral gives the conductor a lot of latitude as far as interpretation goes. One tempo marking is “wayward in time,” and a passage on the marimba is marked to be played ad-libutim (at liberty). The work features four different contrasting melodic components and New kept them distinct.
A main feature of this work is Grainger’s use of tuned percussion, instruments that can play pitches rather than unpitched rhythms. Grainger employed a rare battery of so-called “Deagan instruments,” a collection of fantastical xylophones, vibraharps, organ chimes, aluminum chimes, aluminum harps, Swiss handbells, steel marimbas, orchestra bells, church bells, carillons, and a marimbaphone. Upon entering the hall, we noticed a huge rack of suspended handbells that eventually were played to great effect by two or three percussionists with hammers.
New achieved a good performance throughout, though she didn’t seem to recall that every work of Grainger’s, even the serious ones, incorporates an element of humor or an occasional wink at the listener.
This brings us to the climactic piece, Russian composer Mussorgsky’s piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition, transformed into orchestral magic by Maurice Ravel. The work has an interesting background. When the composer’s artist friend Victor Hartmann died at age 39, it threw Mussorgsky into a deep depression. There was a posthumous exhibition of Hartmann's works; in tribute, Mussorgsky composed a musical “promenade,” giving his sonic impressions of specific paintings shown at the exhibition. The Russian conductor Serge Koussevitzky encouraged Ravel to orchestrate the suite decades later (in the 1920s), and this popular masterpiece was born.
Gemma New was at her very best conducting this tonally varied work. Her left hand still had a mind of its own and occasionally wildly pointed to the first violins, whether they had anything important to do or not. But overall, her reading of this work was excellent and showed that a great deal of musical and conductorial talent lies beneath the extravagant gestures.
Wisely, New saved the sonic explosions for the final portrait, The Great Gate of Kiev. (Should we begin to spell it “Kyiv”?) Usually, conductors spend their maximum orchestral volumes before they get to this finale, but New paced her dynamics throughout so as to have plenty in reserve—and spent them generously when she arrived at Ravel’s thrilling conclusion.
WHEN: Last performance May 29 at 3:00 p.m.
WHERE: Meyerson Symphony Center
WEB: dallassymphony.org
