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© St. Petersburg Times, published December 23, 2001
CARMEN SUITE, THE CHIMES RUSSIAN NATIONAL ORCHESTRA/MIKHAIL PLETNEV (DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON)
Rodion Schedrin (b. 1932) holds a special place in Russian music. As a member and then chairman of the Union of Soviet Composers, his fame was assured, as were performances of his work. He found innumerable ways to throw the system's outrageous impositions on creative artists back upon itself, beating the system at its own game.
Inspired in part by his marriage to Russia's celebrated ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, Schedrin accepted a commission to compose the ballet music to Prosper Merime's popular story about Carmen, a Spanish prostitute. Rather than compose a new work, Schedrin adapted Bizet's opera.
This 13-movement work is part transcription, part musical parody and avails itself of two other works of Bizet: the Suite Arlesienne and his earlier opera La Jolie Fille de Perth. Though expected doses of the Toreador Song pervade the piece, the musical atmosphere remains transparent, its relatively spare textures hovering in a thinner compositional stratosphere than the work that inspired it. Its place as background music is assured: Awash in bells, xylophones and no end of shimmering tremolos, it yearns for the collaboration for which it was intended.
Schedrin's Concerto for Orchestra No. 1, subtitled Naughty Limericks, composed in 1963, avails itself of brass, woodwind, percussion and above all, col legno effects (where the strings are tapped lightly with the wooden side of the bow) in a sardonic musical pastiche. Listen carefully and you can detect the influence of everyone from Leonard Bernstein to Duke Ellington, while the oddly nostalgic strains of something suspiciously similar to Cold War-era television theme music squeaks by imperturbably. The similarities form the cheeky critique of a genre that landed in the living rooms of every American and, it would seem, many Soviet citizens.
The Chimes, commissioned by Leonard Bernstein for the New York Philharmonic, is a more sophisticated work, at least in compositional categories. That it draws on Russia's long tradition of bell and liturgical music is but one measure of its complexity and finesse. Pletnev lends the music a certain dignity that, in less skilled hands, might degenerate into little more than special effects. Grade: A
DREAMS AND FABLES, CECILIA BARTOLI, (Decca)
Bach usually gets most of the credit for the musical innovations of the baroque era. But Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-87), a Bohemian by birth whose career took him from the palaces of Vienna to the salons of Paris, had a no less important voice.
In baroque opera, Gluck was a revolutionary of sorts, reforming conventions that often made instrumental ensembles secondary.
Celebrated mezzo Cecilia Bartoli of late has assumed the role of an early music protagonist, issuing last year a recording devoted to Vivaldi. With her supple vocal athleticism, perfect intonation and fluttery command of coloratura singing, you'd think she would be the ideal interpreter of this repertoire.
But baroque music demands a great deal more than Bartoli's stellar command of rapid roulades and scintillating scales. When everything becomes little more than an exercise, as it does here, characterization subtlety suffers as one motivic gesture begins to sound pretty much the same as the next. Perhaps her most annoying habit, beyond her reluctance to cultivate a suave legato, is the deliberateness with which she renders virtually every phrase rhythmically unintelligible. Even in the poignant Di questa cetra in seno, she falls back on vocal tricks and a chest voice to cover her interpretive inadequacies.
Bartoli favors a nervous hysteria that renders simplicity of expression impossible as it pokes one hole after another in the compositional fabric. She should listen carefully to the leading interpreters of baroque vocal music, Guillemette Laurens and Agnes Mellon, and perhaps study with them. Grade: B-
The music of Anton Bruckner (1824-96) has often been compared with a cathedral, not only for its compositional architecture but also for its integrity and spiritual message. The Seventh Symphony, the work that made its publicity-shy composer famous after its premiere in 1884, remains one of the west's great musical edifices. At once grand and intimate, its four movements take the breath away with their lengthy, earnest melodies, consoling harmonies and oceanic rhythms that wash over the listener with the warmth of a tropical wind.
At the heart of the Seventh Symphony is a heartbreaking Adagio, a tribute to Wagner that draws upon an earlier work of Bruckner, the solemn Te Deum. Following the earnest, noble but also woeful theme introduced in the lower registers of the tubas and strings, a complement of trombones bellows forth ominously en route to its noble climax. The tender interplay of contrasting themes points to Schubert's influence, giving intense expression to Bruckner's stalwart faith. The smoldering passion beneath the suavely fashioned surfaces anticipates the philosophical angst of Mahler's symphonic output some 25 years later, and the concluding movements seek symbolic redemption in radiant yet earthy affirmations.
Hans Vonk's reading is admirable in most respects. He draws an exceptionally rich sonority from the St. Louis, heard in concert, while investing the symphonic fabric with the breadth it demands. His tempi are admirably focused and intelligently gauged, thus rendering intelligible its formal design. Vonk is a shrewd, articulate, sensitive conductor who neither interferes with the natural flow of the Seventh's ardent lyricism nor compromises the specificity of expression. Only occasionally does the playing want for a gutsier string sound, particularly in unison passages that allow the players to dig in for a tenser, more compelling vibrato. That aside, Vonk delivers an impressive and often memorable performance. Grade: A-.