Conservatory Whippersnappers Shouldn't Be Allowed To Use Percussion
John GibbonsSome comments on the Chicago Symphony’s concert of Hindemith and Berlioz last night…I’m not even saying that the premiere piece, by some Julliard phenom, “explosion” whatever is bad, but it combines shallow and egregious noisemaking a la Joseph Schwantner in the 80’s with the new tonal “accessibility” of composers like Del Tredici and Corigliano. Actually, I choose these three references carefully; with its toy piano and syrupy harps it sounds like the latter two composers, and with its 57 percussionists banging on hubcaps and shaking coin jars it sounds like the former. For me it was torture.
Definitely not torture was Paul Hindemith’s charming, if dated, overture to Neues vom Tage, which probably reminded most seasoned listeners of Weill, and the genuinely moving Trauermusik for viola and strings, played with exceptional dignity and elegance by Pinchas Zuckerman. Apparently Hindy wrote it in one day, as a quickie memorial for whichever king died in 1939. See what craft can do for you! I must say, combining salty early Hindemith with the craftsmanlike style of his maturity was good programming. Leonard Slatkin was the very able conductor; Guess his ill conceived and ill received comment about female violinists and “turkey wattles” is forgiven and forgotten. Except not by me. I aspire to emulate the shrewish wife in a cartoon I once saw who is berating her beer-bellied hubby, glumly hunched over his Old Style in a working class tavern, thusly: “Do you think I forget 1957 and that crack you made about my knees!”
I’d like to retract those cracks I made in 2008 concerning Berlioz’s Harold in Italy: while the violist may as well join the section, and while the work is disconcertingly not a concerto, it is a strangely sympathetic symphony. Cynicism vies with sincerity, the satanic vies with the sublime, the self-absorbed vies with the universal, the bucolic vies with the refined, this is a work divided against itself. It amazes and moves me, how the wildly egotistical Hector Berlioz gives us music of such searing honesty and integrity. I’m struck again and again by how fresh and relevant his pieces sound.
By the way, Wagner requires a triangle in the hour long Act 2 of his opera, Siegfried. For one stroke. Richard Strauss called this “A wise use of percussion.” And ask yourself why you’ll never forget that Brahms uses the triangle in the scherzo of his 4th symphony. And what wrecks the scoring of Tchaikovsky’s 4th symphony? Now that’s a work in which all the soft passages are good and all the loud passages are bad. Yes, I’m exaggerating! But the best thing in the score is the spooky viola arpeggio tremolandos obbigato-ing the second subject of the first movement.
Features music by Jefferson Friedman, whose “Sacred Heart: Explosion” was visited on CSO attendees as the requisite modern piece on the Hindemith/Berlioz viola concert reviewed here.
Reader Comments (6)
As to the Tchaikovsky 4th, are you speaking mostly of the 4th movement? Because it's almost all loud. It may be the single worst movement in the last 3 symphonies. I do think the loud sections of the first three movements work quite well.
Right you are. I was thinking of the last movement. I'll say this though, much as I love Tchaikovsky, he is prone to too many heavily scored, unnecessary climaxes. For me, Tchaik is at his best in opera and ballet. I'd like to put in a good word for the First symphony, as well
I've always wondered why the first three Tchaikovsky symphonies aren't programmed more since they are just as charming as a garden variety Mendelssohn symphony.
I was also at the Slatkin/Zukerman concert and agree with you about the Friedman piece.
Dept of Coincidence: In regards to that hoary 'Olympics' piece they played as an encore...Slatkin's father Felix commissioned Leo Arnaud to write the Suite that contains the ubiquitous 'Bugler's Dream'. What is it with the Slatkin family and the Olympics?
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