NMSO: Still Busted

NMSO has tightened its belt yet again, scaling its spring concerts back to two shows a weekend instead of three.  At least one performance is cancelled outright, and the NMSO is attempting to cut other costs in whatever way it can.  After last spring’s seemingly interminable concert delays stemming from the Symphony’s lack of funding, these measures serve to remind, yet again, that the organization is hemorrhaging money.

The symphony is a vital part of the Albuquerque classical music community, and has been for more than seventy-five years.  It provides affordable entertainment, education, and edification.  Losing this organization would be a blow to the community.  In November, the NMSO launched the Give Thanks for the Symphony campaign.  The NMSO needs 5,000 people to donate $100.  There’s even an online donation form, to make the process as easy as possible.  Whether or not you can donate $100, I encourage you to donate what you can.  I know I will.

Review: NMSO – 200 Years of Piano Poetry

In tribute to the anniversary of pianist-composers Robert Schumann and Friedrich Chopin, the NMSO’s latest concert featured pieces by both. The audience could be forgiven for being confused at the program’s title, though, as only the Chopin piece featured piano. In fact, if not for the Chopin, the concert might have been better titled “200 Years of Flute Poetry.”

Schumann and Chopin shared the first half of the program. Schumann’s “Overture to Manfred” was played first. At its best, “Manfred” was moody and expressive, and I was reminded more than once of the symphony’s strikingly melancholy performance of Mendelssohn’s “Scotland” Symphony from an earlier season. However, more often than not, the orchestra (the strings, in particular) sounded hazy and indistinct, like a piano played with too much pedal. The brass section has clearly been working hard, though, and their entrances were sharp and precise, cutting through the otherwise muddy atmosphere of the piece.

The titular piano poetry was presented by Janina Fialkowska, who played Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor. She played expressively and lyrically, managing to make the percussive piano sing more sweetly than the strings that were backing her. As one would expect from Chopin, the piece was very characteristically written for the piano, and Fialkowska brought out a sweeping, majestic quality in her instrument that is seldom heard.

All that being said, I confess that I did not terribly enjoy the performance. This is not necessarily the fault of Fialkowska, or the NMSO, or even Chopin. Rather, I simply dislike the piano concerto as a form. To make the piano stand out over the orchestra, composers must fill their concerti with massive block chords spanning as many octaves as will fit under two hands, and runs, doubled in both hands, that run from end to end of the keyboard. The piano is a bright, percussive instrument to begin with, and this style of writing makes the instrument too bright to blend effectively with the orchestra. Composers know intuitively that the piano sounds comparatively brittle and mechanical. When it is not the solo instrument in a concerto, it is used only in ballet or other percussion-heavy works, if it is used at all. Almost any melody a composer would care to write could be played more effectively by a different instrument. Strings are more expressive, flutes sweeter, oboes more plaintive, bassoons more droll. The brass can play more majestically, and percussionists more dramatically. And yet, in a piano concerto, every melody is assigned to this jack-of-all-trades, making every passage into a music box miniature of itself. This is why I am consistently under-whelmed by the form. While I admit that I was held rhapsodic by Christopher O’Riley’s performance of Beethoven’s “Emperor Concerto” with the NMSO in years past, I will also admit that spying Rachmaninoff concerto in the second half will almost always inspire me to sneak out early.

The second half of the performance opened with Claude Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.” Principal flutist Valerie Potter played the Prelude’s spiraling melody with great emotion, and Figueroa coaxed a shimmering, effervescent sound from the orchestra. The result, befitting of the poem that inspired Debussy, was both seductive and mystical.

The concert ended with Georges Enesco’s “Rumanian Rhapsody.” Based on a Rumanian drinking song, the Rhapsody was lighthearted without seeming frivolous. Its appropriation of bawdy source material called to mind Richard Strauss’s “Till Eulenspiegel,” while the piece’s insistently repeating phrases reminded me of a drunken John Adams. The orchestra threw themselves into the performance, which was giddy, sensuous, and bombastic, in turns. This boozy piece was a great deal of fun to hear, and left me thinking of “In Taberna.” Bibit!

Review: NMSO – Violin Pyrotechnics

The New Mexico Symphony Orchestra paired up with the Albuquerque Youth Symphony for their latest Classics series concert, “Violin Pyrotechnics.” Any fears that I had that student performers would drag down the level of the performance proved to be completely unfounded, as the quality of the music in this concert was consistently head and shoulders above anything the NMSO has done this season. AYS brought a youthful exuberance to the performance, which was matched by the energetic younger audience that followed them to the concert hall. The musicians of the NMSO played with both greater zeal and greater accuracy than usual. Whether this was a result of getting more practice while preparing the students in AYS for the stage, or simply from the NMSO veterans not wishing to be outplayed, these two orchestras together managed to be better than either one independently.

This was well showcased in the Dukas fanfare that opened the program. While the NMSO brass section generally plays energetically, their entrances are generally something less than precise. However, the section played this fanfare cleanly and accurately, without sacrificing their usual extemporaneous energy. This energy did not disappear as other sections joined in, either. Schumann’s second symphony, with its virtuosic second movement, was played brilliantly. Britten’s “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” found both full orchestras on stage, and it made such an imposing wall of sound that I could not tell any of the players were any less than seasoned professionals. It is a testament to the dedication and hard work of the students of AYS that the NMSO is only improved by their sharing of the stage.

Of course, no symphony program is complete without a solo work, and this did not disappoint, either. Violinist Philippe Quint led the orchestra in Erich Korngold’s violin concerto. Korngold composed scores for many early films starring Errol Flynn and others. While this concerto was an attempt at a serious concert work, it is still firmly couched in that cinematic style, with the rich major seventh chords underpinning sweeping, sentimental melodies. Even though the harmonic language Korngold used sounds more at home in the cinema than the concert hall, the piece is masterfully written and orchestrated, marrying high and low technique as well as any Italian opera. Quint played the piece masterfully as well, with a rich, sweet tone that belied the difficulty of the work. That Quint played a Stradivarius only made the piece that much sweeter.

Review: NMSO – Beethoven’s Seventh

We attended the second installment of NMSO’s Classics series last night.  It headlined a performance of Beethoven’s Seventh, but also included pieces for the individual sections by Ernesto Cordero and Richard Strauss.  The concert opened with the strings playing Cordero’s “Insula Tropical,” with Maestro Figueroa himself playing solo violin.  “Insula Tropical” was a four-movement piece based on Caribbean rhythms.  It was built out of movements from two shorter works, one of which had been composed specifically for Figueroa.  I always am gratified to hear newer pieces at the symphony hall, but “Insula Tropical” left me surprisingly cold.  With the exception of the second movement, there were very few melodies to catch the ear.  If Cordero had been able to use the Caribbean rhythms underpinning the piece effectively and with more variation, this could have compensated for the lack of melody and drawn the piece more in line with Stravinsky ballet, but the dance rhythms were played straight and sounded more like an ostinato than a dance.  The harmonic structure was as simple as pop music, and the violin solos as written were little more than arpeggios and runs, and sounded like student etudes.  The whole thing reminded me of old exotica records by Henry Mancini and Esquivel, and I felt the piece as a whole would have been better served in a pops concert.  The members of the string section clearly felt the banality of the piece, and their playing was staid and unemotional.  That Maestro Figueroa’s violin was a little out of tune did not help sell me on the work, either.

Richard Strauss came to the rescue with his “Serenade in E Flat Major for Winds” and his “Solemn Entrance of the Knights of the Johanniter-Ordens” for brass.  The “Serenade” was one of the first pieces he composed, and while it was obvious that he had not developed his expansive orchestral skills that he would later deploy in “Don Juan” or “Till Eulenspiegel,” he still made great use of the varied colors of the different members of the wind family.  With the horns providing a mellow harmonic base to build on, I was amazed how much the competing characteristic sounds of the flutes, oboes, and clarinets could evoke the sound of the entire orchestra.  The wind section tackled the “Serenade” with relish, and it was easily the best technical performance of the first half.

NMSO’s brass section finished the first half of the concert with the “Solemn Entrance” mentioned above.  This piece was sweeping and majestic in scope, and built great towering chords one note at a time across the overtone series much like his earlier “Also sprach Zarathustra.”  Coupled with the purity of tone that brass can achieve, this style of writing caused Popejoy hall to ring like the opening gates of heaven, and the piece was absolutely thrilling to listen to.  NMSO’s brass section played with great energy, and this almost hid their customary lack of technical precision.  As is customary with the section, there were plenty of entrances missed and notes hunted for.  Still, I always prefer an energetic, if scrappy, performance to one that is precise and dull, and I enjoyed their performance immensely.

After the intermission, Maestro Figueroa wasted no time in whipping the orchestra into a frenzy for Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.  Now that they had something challenging under their fingers, the string section played with great emotion, most notably in their heartbreaking rendition of the stately and melancholy second movement of the work.  The orchestra went on to hit every emotional high and low of the piece, and was greeted with the fastest standing ovation I have seen at Popejoy.  This symphony is a masterpiece, and it was masterfully led under Figueroa’s baton.

Review: NMSO – Firebird Dance Spectacular

The New Mexico Symphony Orchestra started its 2010/2011 season this past weekend.  Their opening concert was the Firebird Dance Spectacular, which featured a performance of Stravinsky’s Firebird, complete with a ballet performance by Festival Ballet ABQ.  Maestro Figueroa always turns out very dramatic performances when more contemporary fare is on the program, and The Firebird was no exception.  The climax of the piece was beautifully dramatic, although my favorite musical moments were from the firebird’s dance in the first half, which featured some beautifully sensual melodies in the oboes.  I enjoyed the ballet, although my experience to the form is admittedly limited to NMSO’s occasional stagings of Stravinsky.  My wife, on the other hand, was reduced to fits of giggles by the firebird’s chicken-like choreography.

Not all the concert was quite so strong.  After the performance of the national anthem, which is traditional at the start of each season, the orchestra played Mozart’s Symphony  No. 38 in D Major, K. 504.  While the performance of the Mozart was well executed technically, it felt very restrained.  I got the feeling that the orchestra had devoted more practice time to the Stravinsky, and so was playing it safe with the easier Mozart.  The more lyrical portions of the first movement were played nicely, and by the third movement, the orchestra seemed to relax and let the piece carry itself to a conclusion in a nice allegretto.  All the same, the piece seemed to sit awkwardly on the orchestra like a poorly-cut suit.

The first half of the concert ended with the Prelude to Hansel and Gretel by Englebert Humperdinck (no, not that one).  This piece, which I had not heard before, was quite a pleasant surprise, opening with a wonderfully woodsy-sounding four-voice horn chorale that called to mind the prelude from Der Freischutz.  The piece maintained this dark fairy-tale atmosphere throughout.  Maestro Figueroa let his playfulness shine through, however, by allowing Hansel and Gretel themselves to sneak onstage halfway through the piece, laying breadcrumbs in an unannounced ballet.