Blossom
Music Center
August
4
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| Slick with the baton, quick with a quip. |
One
could be forgiven for thinking that a stand-up comedian had taken the
podium at Blossom on Sunday night. British conductor and composer
Bramwell Tovey has a nifty resume and a nice touch with the baton,
but what he really excels at is one-liners. The kind that would fit
neatly into his side gigs as a jazz pianist, or go over big in a
group of musicians.
Like
the jibes at violists – always the butt of orchestra jokes, for
reasons only the players understand – that Tovey reeled off after the
opening piece, Prelude and Fugue: The Spitfire, a musical
homage to the World War II fighter plane. What’s the difference
between a viola and a Spitfire? One is a thing of grace and beauty.
Or: You can tune a Spitfire.
There
were more, but you get the idea.
This
sort of banter goes over well with the summer set, and Tovey’s
chatty demeanor was a good fit with the first half of the program,
which opened with The Spitfire suite. Created as a film score
by British composer William Walton in 1942, it was later reworked
into a concert piece brimming with patriotic fervor. Or at least what
passes for fervor among the Brits.
To
American ears, the music was less stirring, invoking mostly opening
and closing credits and a noisy scene in an airplane factory. Tovey
gave the piece a regal bearing and pleasant gloss, but otherwise
there wasn’t much to recommend it, other than as a bit of British
arcana delivered with aplomb by a British conductor. This was the
first time the Cleveland Orchestra performed Spitfire, and
at least for the foreseeable future, likely the last.
Of
more interest was another inaugural performance by the orchestra –
the second piece, Samuel Barber’s Cello Concerto (Op. 22).
As Tovey noted in a lengthy introduction, aside from his 1936 Adagio
for Strings, Barber’s music does not get played much. It’s a
puzzle why, since the American composer was highly regarded during
his lifetime (1910 – 1981), winning two Pulitzer Prizes for his
work. A dearth of memorable melodies may have something to do with
it. But Tovey probably nailed the main reason in his description of
Barber’s Cello Concerto: “It’s really difficult to
play.”
 |
| A strong showing. |
That
was evident from the first bars of the opening movement, a seemingly
random series of intonations and phrases erupting from different
parts of the orchestra in a wonderfully inventive structure that led
organically to the soloist, Mark Kosower, the orchestra’s principal
cellist. Kosower was very good, showing command of a complicated part
played completely from memory, and running through a full inventory
of techniques, from sharp pizzicato to warm, emotional lines in the
lower register played against the orchestra’s high-gloss violins.
According
to Tovey, Barber had finished the concerto when he got word of the
Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, whereupon he tore up the third
movement and completely rewrote it. That might account for its more
somber tone, new themes, feelings of anxiety and notes of distress.
Kosower rose to technical challenges that grew increasingly
conplicated, and Tovey drew an equally sophisticated performance from
the orchestra, keeping the sound clean and balanced. In all, it was
an impressive and satisfying presentation of a piece that deserves to
be heard more often.
The
second half brought what everyone came to hear: The Planets,
written by the British composer with the Germanic name, Gustav Holst.
Tovey joked that he “never came across anyone in England who knows
anything about space,” and noted that the source of the composer’s
inspiration was astrological, not astronomical. Nonetheless, Holst
created evocative portraits of seven planets that have become an
orchestral staple.
Tovey
offered a comparatively controlled reading of the piece, never quite
hitting the maelstrom that characterizes more adventurous versions of
“Mars” and “Uranus,” and employing rhythms that came
alarmingly close to oom-pah-pah in “Jupiter.” His skill lies
mainly in his craftsmanship, and there were some truly fine moments
of that – elegant, luminous strings in “Venus,” aching chords
and a subtle internal vibration in “Saturn,” and a vivid,
shimmering “Neptune” that provided a transcendent close.
After
a heady night of rockets and airplanes, where did that leave Barber?
As the most interesting composer on the program. Here’s hoping the
orchestra brings him back soon.
For
more on Bramwell Tovey: http://www.bramwelltovey.com/
For
more on Samuel Barber:
http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/long-bio/Samuel-Barber
Mark Kosower photo by Hyun Kang
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