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Opening Night for the BSO at Tanglewood: From Bad News to Good News and Back

Writer's picture: Larry WallachLarry Wallach

The Boston Symphony conducted by Andris Nelsons; Yuja Wang, piano soloist
Program:
Leonard Bernstein, Opening Prayer (Benediction)
Franz Liszt, Piano Concerto no. 1 in E-flat major
Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring

The idea was to use Leonard Bernstein’s “Opening Prayer (Benediction),” as a prelude:
a short, solemn plea for the spiritual sustenance of a musical season. It was originally
written for the reopening of Carnegie Hall in 1986. Despite the rousing brass fanfare
with which it begins, its mood is pensive and somber, befitting our present moment of national anxiety. And it was to be suitably followed by “The Age of Anxiety,” Bernstein’s elaborate musical rendition of W. H. Auden’s Pulitzer Prize-winning long poem about the anomie in the post-war generation, one of the composer’s most important and interesting symphonic scores. But this was not to be: pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, scheduled for the concerto-like piano solo, had to drop out and the work was abandoned. I guess that not even Yuja Wang could learn that very difficult part on short notice.

The good news was that she was available as a substitute, and presumably chose the
Liszt Piano Concerto no. 1 as her vehicle. No aura of anxiety hovers around that work,
nor about Wang’s absolutely dominant mastery of it. In fact, in the event, it was the
high-point of the concert. The Liszt counts as one of the first true “war-horses” in the
repertory, the term that came to mind when I learned of the substitution. “The Well-
Tempered Ear” website describe “war-horse” as follows:
“[L]isteners … use the term pejoratively or disapprovingly, in a snobby or
condescending way, to describe great music that is performed frequently.”

I think of a war-horse, however, as a vehicle for going into battle—a virtuoso animal that
can only be controlled with great physical chops as well as interpretive derring-do, a
companion on the musical battle-field. While forgotten concerti were being written
during the romantic era as vehicles for display, we don’t usually hear them since their
musical content is thin; the snobby term for such works is “clap-trap.” Liszt’s concerto
has plenty virtuoso display, but also much more. For me, it has one of the composer’s
most interesting and well-thought-out musical structures, and the surprise is that it has
been a long time since I have heard a live performance of it, until Friday night. Perhaps
it has been deemed passé, but not by Yuja Wang! She clearly knows it chapter and
verse—and (to mix a metaphor) rode it gleefully into battle, to the delight of the
audience and obviously the orchestra as well.

I want to discuss the concerto and Wang’s performance further, but first I want to
indicate that the big piece on the second half, Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” was
performed so poorly that I am reluctant to devote much space to it. Five years ago it
was given an absolutely great, world-class reading at Tanglewood by conductor
Gianfranco Guerrero; this performance couldn’t lay a finger it. More about that later.

Liszt’s concerto uses a novel approach to form. Normally, concerti were and still are in
three or four separate movements. But Liszt had an ambition to interrelate all parts of
the concerto into a unified dramatic and melodic arc, and he developed an integrated
form where the movements flow together as sections of one continuous organism.
(There is one such model prior to Liszt: Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasy for piano, which
Liszt adored.) Each of the main sections of Liszt’s concerto (corresponding to traditional
movements) feels incomplete in itself, but all four link together formed a satisfying
musical whole. The composer used the same concept on a larger scale in his Piano
Sonata in B minor, perhaps his most significant work.

We are used to thinking of Liszt as the ultimate virtuoso, and of course he was; the
piano writing in this concerto is typically brilliant, wide-ranging, gasp-inducing; but,
contrary to snobbish and condescending opinion, he was a serious musical explorer, and
this concerto represents a wonderful balance of all his characteristics, including his
Faustian-Mephistophelean temperament and his warm romantic lyricism. There is a
unified melodic scheme: the opening powerful assertion by the entire orchestra
launches a series of variations and extensions that pervades the work up to the final
notes. The dialogue between the orchestra and soloist is one of equal forces: unlike the
second movement of Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto, in which a quiet and eloquent piano
tames the rude utterances of the orchestral strings, here the piano immediately
responds to power with more power. The conversation is sometimes competitive,
sometimes collaborative: in quieter sections the piano weaves a magical web of
harmony around soulful lyrical statements by solo clarinet, violin, or cello. Elsewhere
the tintinnabulations of a triangle fuse with brilliant writing for the highest piano
register, conjuring Mephistopheles’ elfin trickery.

Yuja wang
There is a danger that with the strategy of deferred endings and lyrical interludes the concerto will seem fragmentary and episodic. This would be particularly the case if the
performers choose to exaggerate fast passages and linger over slower moments. The miracle of this performance was that each moment was given its full expressive value
and yet everything held together. Wang dared to reduce her powerful dynamic range to a whisper for intimate moments, drawing the attention of the audience from the
farthest reaches of the Shed. Such was the power of the other sections that the contrasts created a charged electrical atmosphere; one breathlessly awaited the return
of the thunder and lightning. Wang is a miraculous performer whose virtuosity transcends the demands of the score and always adds extra value, converting difficulty
into joyful expression, and allowing the music to make its own statement fully without apparent exaggeration or willfulness. She does not back off from technical display—
there is no façade of either arrogance or modesty, no over-thinking, just a complete
inhabitation of what is implicit in the score. This is what sets her apart from the other
(many) super virtuosos of her generation and always makes her playing riveting. The
same was true of her encore, which is indeed a piece of unalloyed virtuosity: Horowitz’s
confection of themes from Carmen. Here Wang threw her fans the red meat they were
hoping for, outdoing even Horowitz himself.

So what was wrong with “The Rite?” What wasn’t? Technically it was a mess; there
were shockingly wrong entrances and insecure playing. The brasses over-played.
Balances were off. Details that should have been in the background were overemphasized,
while layers of texture that should have been in the foreground were
almost inaudible.

Stravinsky hated “interpretation;” he just wanted musicians to adhere to the score, and
to leave out their personal feelings. During one period following the premier of “The
Rite,” he started composing for player pianos. (This is the same impulse that led Milton
Babbitt to begin composing for synthesizers forty years later.) What was great about
that Guerroro/BSO performance was that they delivered the score with an almost
hallucinatory vividness, perfectly capturing its unique rhythmic character. What is that
character? The music is built on perfectly regular pulsations that organize all other
aspects of the music. This is why dancers love everything Stravinsky composed. There
are quantum shifts (or jolts) in the pulse-rates that define the various sections and
actions, but these need to be crystal clear and absolutely steady. All the layers in the
score must be audible, unlike romantic works where there are backgrounds that are
meant to be perceived subliminally. Nelsons met almost none of these requirements.
He “interpreted” by foregrounding some elements, manipulating the pulses in the name
of “expression,” and muddying the texture. I think this approach gave the musicians the
jitters. The result was noisy and random-sounding, the stereotype of ugly modern music
(despite the score’s venerable 109 years).

Nelsons clearly has a romantic concept of this piece which is ill-suited to it. Guerrero
enlisted the enthusiasm of his musicians and they played the paint off the walls. It was
collective music-making at its best. This performance had one person trying to impose
his vision on the group. That doesn’t usually turn out well.
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© 2024 by Larry Wallach.

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