Based on most local media coverage of Ward Stare, the
Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra’s new music director, you would know that he’s
young, he’s handsome, and he looks good in a tuxedo — all excellent attributes
in a conductor, of course, but …
The media have approached Stare’s musical credentials more
gingerly; nonetheless they are definitely there, and based on last night’s RPO season
opener, the orchestra’s confidence in him is understandable.
Stare and the orchestra, and guest violinist Midori,
presented a standard overture-concerto-symphony program. All three from the
19th-century and, in the case of Brahms’s Violin Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s
Fourth Symphony, even from (more or less) the same year: 1878. But if the
program was standard, the performances were fresh and distinctive. Brahms and
Tchaikovsky didn’t have much to say about each other that I know of, and I
can’t imagine they cared for each other’s music, but putting these composers
together on a program — and these pieces in particular — made for an intriguing
contrast.
Midori was an unusually modest, almost retiring soloist in
the Brahms concerto. Her tone was pleasingly refined and delicate and her
manner shy, rather unusual for a romantic-era concerto which is often played in
a “beefy” manner. In the first movement of this concerto, the orchestra
proposes, and the soloist disperses: again and again the orchestra works up a
good head of steam, and then the soloist wanders off in ruminative passages
that wind over and around the background.
Midori’s unusually modest demeanor, standing close to the
orchestral violins and often seeming to commune with her instrument, brought
this element of the music into sharper relief than usual, and I found it
fascinating. Midori has the musical intelligence to realize that often in this
concerto, she is not leading the orchestra but accompanying it. (The
19th-century violinist Pablo de Sarasate refused to
play the Brahms concerto because he thought the oboe had the only good melody
in it.) The concerto is certainly virtuosic, but its template is closer to a
kind of mega-chamber music. Midori often seemed hardly like a star soloist at
all, and in this work that’s a compliment.
Stare and the orchestra played with generally broad tempos
and attention to expressive details, giving the music a burnished, romantic
sound (the long passage for winds at the beginning of the slow movement was
exquisitely done — including that famous oboe solo, sensitively played by Erik
Behr). This performance of the Brahms concerto was anything but the flashy
event one might expect for a season-opening concert, but it suited the
thoughtful work to a T.
If Brahms ever heard Tchaikovsky’s
Fourth Symphony, he surely shuddered at its rampant emotionality and
uninhibited orchestral sound. Of course, those very things made this work
continuously popular with concert audiences (and with conductors). Given a good
performance, it always comes off, and it came off handsomely on Thursday night —
not just well played (in some cases fantastically played) by the orchestra, but
well thought-out by the conductor. The symphony’s huge first movement is
unconventionally structured and can ramble — Stare kept the episodes in
proportion and the movement built very convincingly to its huge climax. The
ballet-like middle movements were all nostalgia and charm, and the finale
irresistibly exciting: headlong and solid as a rock at the same time.
As for the orchestra, it seemed to be giving 100 percent in
all departments. The solo wind work was beautiful; Behr had another luscious
slow-movement solo, as did clarinetist Kenneth Grant and hornist Peter Kurau in the first movement. The brass section was powerful
but not blaring (a danger in this piece, which is permeated by a baleful
fanfare symbolizing fate), and the strings played all their unison melodies and
rushing scales with thrilling unanimity.
The concert started with the overture to “Beatrice and
Benedict,” Berlioz’s comic opera based on Shakespeare’s “Much Ado about
Nothing.” The composer described his work as “a caprice written in
needlepoint,” and his music, like the play, alternates capriciousness and
romance very effectively. In this robust performance, both won out — and in
this opening concert, so did Stare and the RPO.
This article appears in Sep 17-23, 2014.
