Guest Conductor And Pianist Excel
Spokane Symphony Orchestra, Friday, March 24, the Opera House
Musicians, even conductors themselves, sometimes see guest conductors as con artists. A friend - a conductor himself - summed it up for me: “A guest conductor flies into a town, stays at the best hotel, waves his arms around in works he’s conducted a hundred times before, collects his fee and leaves.”
This season, the Spokane Symphony has had two remarkable exceptions to that canard; first, Kazuyoki Akiyama, then, Friday night, Klauspeter Seibel.
Seibel, the newly appointed music director of the Louisiana Symphony and currently music director of the Kiel Opera and Kiel Philharmonic in Germany, conducts with seeming abandon, using what appear to be the exaggerated, grandstanding gestures described by my cynical friend. With Seibel, these motions were dramatic, but musically purposeful.
Seibel, whom I observed both in rehearsal and in performance, is not only an outstanding musician but a meticulous taskmaster who is unrelenting in his attention to details. He was a stickler for correct balances and intonation.
Schumann’s Third Symphony was the most obvious beneficiary of Seibel’s integrity and musicianship. Schumann never made it easy for a conductor to achieve a compelling performance. Schumann’s textures tend to sound thick and clotted, important melodic lines often seem to lack character because they are doubled by several solo instruments at once, and Schumann’s rhythms rarely follow traditional accent patterns long enough for the listener to get a firm grip on the flow of a given section.
Seibel’s careful balancing of the orchestra achieved an almost Mendelssohnian lightness and provided each of the melodies with a characteristic color. The Spokane brass section has rarely sounded so ringingly noble. The conductor’s rhythmic control swept listeners (this one, anyway) along through Schumann’s restless surges and syncopations. It was a spirit-lifting performance of a work that is frequently a crashing bore.
Even Beethoven’s Overture to “Coriolan,” a piece that comes close to belonging to that cavalry of warhorses, was charged with dark foreboding and fresh lyricism.
I was prepared to be impressed with the playing of piano soloist Ursula Oppens. She possesses a mighty intellect, a splendid technique and a great sense of style. Oppens’ reputation has been built mainly by her performances of thorny contemporary music. What would she make, I wondered, of Schumann’s highly romantic Introduction and Allegro Appassionato (sometimes call Concertstuck)? Well, she made something wonderfully romantic out of it. The work is new to her, and there were labored moments here and there when Schumann must have imagined a soloist with 12 fingers. But these awkward spots were fleeting and inconsequential. Oppens was fully in control of Schumann’s improvisatory concept, and she fully delivered on the work’s songful warmth and romantic dash.
She was, of course, right at home with the acerbic wit and tricky, wicked rhythms of Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Winds. Stravinsky’s idea of piano sound as percussive and hard-edged was almost the opposite of Schumann’s ideal of singing warmth. Oppens provided a razor-sharp zing, but she also found lyric moments, too. The second movement begins with an oddly wayward tune Oppens played as lovingly as she might a Chopin nocturne.
Since the brightly colorful accompaniment of Stravinsky’s Concerto is for winds alone (except for the presence of string basses), the Spokane woodwinds and brasses were in their glory, and Seibel led them adroitly through the work’s rhythmic pitfalls and quirky turns of phrase.
The guest artists and the symphony made a memorable evening of music.