THE ROMANTICS, FROM ARNOLD TO ZINMAN 
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of April 26-May 3, 2009
                                                                  Vol. 11, No. 96
          WASHINGTON, DC --- In a microcosm, the plight of American symphony orchestras in the economic crisis was the National Symphony’s evening subscription concert at the Kennedy center April 23: Every seat in the house sold at the box office reduced to half-price. And still a goodly number of seats  going begging.
            You could blame it on the absence of a concerto soloist (always a draw). You could blame it on the fright factor of 12-tonalist Arnold Schoenberg on the program. Or, perhaps, on the maestro transition (from Leonard Slatkin to Ivan Fischer, not yet in full effect). You could also blame it on the National’s choice of a 7 p.m. curtain, forcing one and all to slog through the heart of the frenzied evening commute-rush hour to arrive, perhaps peaked and frustrated, for an evening of great music.
            And great music there was, plus a familiar old pro on the podium: Late-romantic opuses out of early Webern and Schoenberg, along with Brahms’ beloved Symphony No. 4. And conductor David Zinman, 72, was a known and respected commodity on the guest podium, having led the Baltimore Symphony with distinction for 13 years.
            About atonal-Schoenberg-terror, we should know better. None of his clashing dissonances of the later career enter his “Transfigured Night,” Op. 4, an all-string  work of ever heightened chromaticism traceable back to Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” along the evolutionary chain. The half-hour-long “Night” had inspired Antony Tudor’s modern-ballet classic “Lilac Garden” about a loveless betrothal to great effect on stage. All its surges of drama were skillfully brought out under Zinman’s highly sensitive direction, with the string basses providing a good but ominous bite in the lower depths of the spectrum. You did not need to read the poem that had inspired the piece; you knew however there was passion, serenity, love and dejection all bound up in one grand score. 
            Schoenberg disciple Anton Webern was also stepping out of character in his unpublished, posthumous “Langsamer Satz” (Slow Movement), written at age 21 as a composition assignment. It is a lush romantic outpouring, tonal throughout, along the rainbow tracing from Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll” to Richard Strauss’ “Metamorphosen” in the following century.
            Webern spins out a very long principal theme, just as in those two others, and eventually gravitates toward an elegiac mood of resignation, neatly encapsulated in a 10-minute score. Gerard Schwarz, who had premiered it two decades after the composer’s death, had made the arrangement out of the original string-quartet score.
            Much to the credit of orchestra and conductor, these all-string pieces came off despite the rather phlegmatic acoustics of the Kennedy Concert Hall, where the solo violin out front is often swallowed into total oblivion. The brass in turn sounds strong, the sonic “afterglow” much better than many a rival hall, and the string basses are quite audible whenever summoned.
            An orchestra is only as good as the hall it plays in; in the ideal hall, I warrant, the National players would be audibly more successful.
            If any one was stewing over an all-string first half, he had to be mollified by the ebullient full-orchestra Brahms that followed. Zinman again went for dramatic surges that energized the opus; the French horns’ fanfares opening the final movement were stirring enough to waken the dead. The horns had a rich, round, lush tone. Overall, I think Brahms would have loved all that drama.
            National Symphony Orchestra, playing its 11,460th concert in its 78th season. Kennedy Center, Washington, DC. For info: (202) 416-8100, or go online. 

        ©Paul Hertelendy 2009
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           Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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