{"id":14383,"date":"2013-11-08T12:28:24","date_gmt":"2013-11-08T16:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=14383"},"modified":"2014-03-15T17:48:16","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T21:48:16","slug":"opening-nights-and-otherwise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=14383","title":{"rendered":"Opening Nights and Otherwise"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Sedgwick Clark<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Deep thought of the day: Every performance is different. <\/span><\/p>\n

Second deep thought: Every listener hears the performance differently.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two weeks ago I wrote at the end of my \u201cValery the Variable\u201d blog that opening-night critics had lambasted Valery Gergiev\u2019s conducting of the Met\u2019s Eugene Onegin<\/i> (9\/23) as unbearably slow and stodgy. Having found in the past that the last performance in a series was his best, I deliberately waited for the sixth and last one (10\/12) and found that I \u201ccouldn\u2019t imagine more effective, naturally flowing tempos.\u201d Last weekend I heard the beginning of Gergiev\u2019s Met broadcast of Onegin <\/i>on SiriusXM radio\u2014obviously an earlier performance\u2014and it was indeed unbearably slow and stodgy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is Esa-Pekka Salonen the anti-Gergiev, by which I mean that one should try to attend his earliest performances? Jay Nordlinger in The New Criterion <\/i>and Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times <\/i>rhapsodized about every note of E-P\u2019s excellent program with the Philharmonic, based around the New York premiere of\u00a0his\u00a0recent Violin Concerto and performed five times. Ravel\u2019s Ma M\u00e8re l\u2019oye <\/i>Suite gently opened the concert, and Sibelius\u2019s Fifth Symphony brought it to a roaring close.<\/span><\/p>\n

I heard the final concert of the series, and my reaction contradicts nearly everything they wrote about the Ravel <\/i>and Sibelius works. We were much closer in our perceptions of the second work\u00a0performed\u2014of Salonen\u2019s Violin Concerto (2009) with a fiery Leila Josefowicz as soloist, which evidently received the most rehearsal (and Tommasini\u2019s consideration in his review). The concerto is very easy on the ears, as his music increasingly became while discovering the basic repertoire on the Los Angeles Philharmonic podium over 17 years. Brilliant moments abound, but I miss a sense of structure, a feeling that the piece is going somewhere. (No difficulty in this regard with the Sibelius Fifth, that\u2019s for sure.) So I look forward to auditioning these artists\u2019 L.A. recording on DG and seeing what I think after repeated hearings.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s no surprise that I sense a lack of direction in Salonen\u2019s compositions because I often find little detours in his conducting of other composers\u2019 works. Take Ravel, for instance: In the third movement Salonen adopted a slower tempo for a ten-bar transition between numbers 6 and 7, and then again for a similar transition between 16 and 17, which only served to break the music\u2019s stride. And talk about breaking stride, he slowed markedly for the majestic horn theme (deciso<\/i>) in the finale of the Sibelius, sapping its inherent energy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps due to exhaustion\u2014rehearsal of a new program in the morning and the\u00a0previous program for the fifth time in the evening\u2014the Phil\u2019s playing in the Sibelius was surprisingly lacking in transparency on Tuesday. Jay wrote of the first note of the Sibelius being \u201cabsolutely together\u201d and the horns playing in \u201cflabbergastingly fine shape.\u201d On Tuesday, the first note was ragged and the horn fished the opening solo. Moreover, pianissimo<\/i> playing was never quiet enough, most distressingly in the ppp<\/i> Misterioso section in the finale. I wonder what it was like on opening night.<\/span><\/p>\n