Symphony Review: At ‘Masterworks 7: Primavera,’ Lowe commands symphony through season of renewal
James Lowe, music director and conductor of the Spokane Symphony, left no doubt as to the effect he wished the orchestra’s seventh “Masterworks” concert to have on its audience: It was to feel the joy, the energy, the sense of renewal that comes with the arrival of spring. Thus, he used the Italian word for spring, “Primavera,” to name the program, and then built it up by selecting three works full of warmth, color and energy.
“Masterworks 7” had other connections, as well. It continued several themes that have been important throughout this season: the nature of Romanticism as it emerged in European concert music during the nineteenth century, and the role of women in the inspiration, performance and creation of that music. The first concert of the season considered the effect on Alexander Zemlinsky and Gustav Mahler of their love for Anna Schindler, and also included a rapturous performance of a song written by her. A more recent program focused on the extraordinary figure of Clara Schumann, who inspired two men who loved her, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, to write masterpieces, composed a brilliant piano concerto herself, and who was furthermore acclaimed as one of the greatest touring pianists of her time.
Last weekend’s concerts opened with a work by Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847), a contemporary of Clara Schumann and a person of central importance in the life of her brother, Felix (1809-1847), one of the pillars of the Romantic period and the most precociously gifted composer in the history of European music. Though Fanny composed hundreds of works, the prejudices of her time kept them from circulating beyond her own social circle. The Overture in C performed last weekend is her only work for orchestra, and was not published until 1994. While the piece is a fresh and charming work, one would be wrong to place in the same class as her brother’s works. Still, it is certainly admirable that she produced a work so brimming with melodic ideas and composed with such taste and skill. Still, one must bear in mind that a few years earlier, when he was only 17 years old, Felix set down his Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a work of such startling imaginative scope, melodic inspiration, and perfection of both structure and orchestration that it continues to astound and delight audiences whenever it is played.
Judged as a work on its own right, as it should be, Fanny Mendelssohn’s overture proved an ideal opener for a concert celebrating the arrival of spring. The sweet, wistful phrases of its slow introduction were very sensitively phrased as they were announced in the winds and answered by the strings. The ensuing allegro released a burst of energy that retained our attention thanks to the lively rhythmic pointing Lowe secured from every choir of the orchestra, despite the conventional character of Fanny Mendelssohn’s melodic ideas, and the fact that she showed slight inclination to develop those ideas, preferring, rather, to repeat them a bit too often, before dropping them and introducing something new.
By comparison, her brother’s Symphony No. 4 in A major Op. 90, the “Italian Symphony,” is one damned miracle after another. Its explosive energy, the brilliance of its orchestration, and – most of all – its inexhaustible wellspring of melodic inspiration provide delight even in the weariest and dullest of performances. When rendered with the vitality and discipline we heard from the Spokane Symphony, the effect is transformative. Coming as it did after the leisurely wandering about and chit-chatting of intermission, experiencing the opening of Mendelssohn’s Allegro Vivace was less like watching a thoroughbred break from the starting gate than sitting on it. Among his many attributes, Mendelssohn took delight in writing music that was demanding to play, not because it was simply fatiguing or awkwardly written for the instrument, but, on the contrary, because it was perfectly written for the instrument, provided the player possessed a very high level of skill and agility. Lowe asked a great deal of the orchestra in setting the rapid tempos that he did, and it responded flawlessly.
The symphony begins with the violins singing out an invigorating, totally italianate melody of Mendelssohn’s invention at high speed. Meanwhile, the winds and horns are asked to chatter away, playing six clearly separated notes in each measure, at a tempo which has a measure lasting approximately one second. This stream of rapid notes, demanding complete mastery of every player, runs virtually uninterrupted through the first movement. Yet, the impression on the audience is one of utter fluency and ease. Furthermore, the difficulty of managing the notes never interfered with the simultaneous need to shape phrasing – the relationship of each note to the surrounding notes – and manipulate tone color and volume according to the instructions contained in the score.
For all his vitality and lyricism, however, Mendelssohn, like all composers (whenever a critic uses the phrase “all composers,” please understand that JS Bach is always excepted), has deficiencies as well as strengths. In particular, there are elements of Romanticism that he avoided. Chief among them is its exploration of the darker corners of life, those that contain sorrow, rejection, loss and death. Among the Romantics, it was Schubert who remained most acutely conscious of the tragic nature of life and most able to convey it through music. The cloud of tragedy does not darken a single note of the “Italian Symphony,” but it does appear in the second work on the “Masterworks 7” program: the “Symphonie Espagnole” for violin and orchestra (1874) by Édouard Lalo (1823-92).
Soloist in these performances was Mateusz Wolski, stepping, as he has once in every season for the past 20 years, away from his role as concertmaster of the orchestra to assume the role of soloist in a concerto. Though the relationship between soloist and orchestra in the “Symphonie Espagnole” exactly as it is in a standard concerto, Lalo avoided using that term because the work he created follows the design of a symphony, rather than that of a concerto. While a concerto is designed to display the abilities of the soloist to maximum effect, a symphony is designed portray successive stages in an argument, usually passing from exposition through exploration and development to resolution.
This is a rather solemn way to talk about Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole, which does allow a virtuoso violinist to display mastery of the instrument in ways that are both delightful and impressive, and, frankly, that is all that many violinists – some of whom are very famous and celebrated, indeed – have asked of the piece. That is not all that Mateusz Wolski asked of it on Saturday night, and not, with the deeply impressive assistance of James Lowe and his orchestra, all he found in it.
The work opens with some dark and stormy chords in the full orchestra, which are interrupted by antic acrobatics from the violin, as though to dismiss to orchestra’s stern solemnity, and to replace it with a languorous melody redolent of the sunny south. Lalo develops this type of banter, entirely characteristic of the concerto idiom, until he reaches a point of transition, at which point the spotlight focuses for only a few measures on the soloist. At this point, Wolski did something quite remarkable. He turned what can be taken as a rather plain transitional passage into an arresting narrative of subtle and elusive significance, pointing to issues laying beneath the sparkling surface of Lalo’s travelogue – issues that will come to the fore later in the work.
Wolski accomplished this by pouring his considerable resources of color and phrasing into a passage of music, imparting to it a dreamlike narrative quality and an aura of Romantic mystery. In so doing, he alerted us to a role played by the soloist that is often overlooked: as a source of wisdom and guidance, as well as fun and fireworks. Again, in the second movement, Wolski reached deep into the tonal resources of the Landolfi violin of 1779 he plays to produce the same complex blend of passion and disillusionment that colors the voice of the traditional flamenco soloist.
Moments like this signaled to the audience what lay ahead in the fourth movement, marked andante. Wolski has spoken of the beauty of this movement as being so great as to move him to tears. He considers it one of the most profound passages in all the vast literature for violin and orchestra. If we had not heard that quality before in this music, we did on Saturday night.
Just before the start of the fourth movement, Wolski stepped forward to tell the audience that he was dedicating it to his wife, Dawn, who, as was announced at the end of last year, diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer. Many in the audience have been forced to confront the tragic aspect of life in this way, but few if any have the ability to convey to others through the medium of art, as Mateusz Wolski can, and to locate it in Lalo’s score to his “Symphonie Espagnole.” This is the highest echelon of musical interpretation, placed at our service in this season of renewal, the season of Easter and Passover, in which many celebrate the triumph of life over death.
Dawn’s illness has made it impossible for her to continue working, thus depriving her of health insurance. Anyone who wishes to augment their past applause for what she and Mateusz have given in such abundance to our community may do so at https://venmo.com/u/Dawn-wolski-1