A 'NEW' SYMPHONY BY CHARLES
IVES
CHALLENGES THE PATRONS
By Paul Hertelendy
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of Feb..5-12, 2010
Vol. 12, No. 62
Are any
composers less alike than Franz Schubert and Charles Ives?
Naturally,
Michael Tilson Thomas can’t resist programming them cheek-by-jowl on
the same
evening.
From
the
most harmonious, to (at times) the most dissonant. The most ingenuous
to the
most complex. The most Establishment-oriented to the most rebellious,
musically.
The most Old-World European, writing sacred music, to a New-World
iconoclast
and innovator, hidden behind his guise as a New York insurance
executive. One of the great
Vienneses masters, vs. the great, unique early-American
explorer/innovator.
Though
Ives
died in 1954 just short of his 80th birthday, he has
produced
something new here, an often prickly magnum opus called “A Concord
Symphony,”
49 minutes of high-intensity performance by a large orchestra. You will
not
find it among his collected works; it is an orchestration of his
clangorous Concord
Sonata for piano, the one often referred to as unplayable. The maverick
Ives
worked on it for many years, adding overlay upon overlay, with jumbles
of
clashing notes often mushing into mere keyboard sound, never
realistically expecting
any one to play it, just happy to produce an intellectually profound score with philosophical trappings to be left
for
posterity. Sort of like rolling “Moby Dick,” “Finnegans Wake,” ”Crime and Punishment” and “War and Peace”
into a single volume, with a lot of the typeset superimposed in agate
for
challenging reading. I could visualize a defiant Ives standing on a
mountain
during a raging thunderstorm and exuberantly waving his cane in
defiance at all
the lightning pounding down around him.
When
premiered in the late 1930s, no less a critic than Lawrence Gilman
wrote that
this sonata was the greatest piece of music ever written by an American.
Later on Henry
Brant spent 36 years
off and on orchestrating it and renaming it, until finally it came to San Francisco
with the
Symphony on Feb. 3. And, as one musician told me that night, this new orchestral version was in many ways preferable,
as the contrasting textures of the orchestra audibly flesh out much
more of the
music than the piano version.
Much of the
audience at Davies Hall
emerged on the grim side at the end of that night (and one patron
confronting
us was clearly angry), as Ives produces very few musical bonbons in his
mammoth
score. There is an oft-told tale that once at a concert Ives had
spontaneously admonished
a listener behind him showing his displeasure at a dissonant score,
telling
him, stand up and take it like a man!
The four
movements hardly resonate
with the aura of the figures represented as we know them: Emerson,
Hawthorne,
the Alcotts and Thoreau. They come across as mostly
craggy, volatile, cantankerous.
And Ives does
not make it
easy---the first two movements alone take a half-hour. There is hardly
a smile
or soft billet-doux anywhere, just the
massive tonal overkill of that rabble-rouser
Ives, who in effect was vigorously sculpting his own Mt.
Rushmore with sinewy strokes
to
commemorate outstanding New England
literati
of the period 1840-60. As a revolutionary, Ives was at work doing for America
what
Beethoven had done for Europeans.
This is not a
symphony (or even
sonata) in the usual sense or definition. It’s four episodic works
strung together, as much so as his loosely
bundled “Holidays” Symphony, each part as hardy and
untamed as a granite mountain range. There is little unity, or
interconnectivity, afoot.
So my solution
is simple: At the
risk of heresy, I’d propose not playing this work
by one of the great American innovators
as a symphony, but rather detach each of the movements, to be played
individually
on different programs. They would resonate far better, and hold up for
viewing
the soul of Ives as well as the seminal figures portrayed with far
greater
clarity. I would start with one of the two final movements, “The
Alcotts” or “Thoreau,”
which go down more easily with their touch of warmth, serenity and familiar quotations. And later on tackle
either “Hawthorne” or that most daunting one of all opening the work,
the
furious “Emerson.” In that setting, Ives’ music would
glow brighter, with all his emotion,
ferocity, and unbridled rebelliousness.
And I think
that would have been
acceptable to Ives, who was notoriously flexible in his performance
instructions.
The “Alcotts”
movement is the
shortest and most peaceful, with oblique quotations from Beethoven’s
Fifth as
well as a couple of popular American tunes from Ives’ day. The
“Thoreau” finale
alludes to “Walden Pond,” with lyrical
strings
playing a descending theme. It has tempo shifts and metric shifts,
along with
moments of repose.
MTT introduced
the symphony and
then led the performance, which bore out his description of this “sonic
palimpsest.” “Emerson” was loud, long, brassy and fiery, as episodic as
it was
eccentric. The “Hawthorne”
that followed was quirky, with outbursts of high-pitched winds, and
many
overlapping currents, eventually giving way to a hymn-like theme as if
on a
church harmonium, and then an agitated march.
The large,
percussion-heavy S.F. Symphony forces
executed this
convincingly if not endearingly, with some notable solos (bassoonist
Steven
Dibner, oboist William Bennett).
In a timely
celebration of the S.F.
Symphony-cum-Chorus winning three Grammy awards earlier in the week,
they all
turned out for a heart-warming performance of the brief Mass No. 2 in G
Major
(1815) written by an 18-year-old kid named Schubert. He was a very
precocious kid,
with an extraordinary command of melody, and a mature style some would
compare
to Mozart. It’s one of the most impressive things I’ve ever heard the
SFS
Chorus execute, enunciating the Latin consonants as never before (is
Ragnar Bohlin
reforming this ensemble and attacking its most consistent flaw of
yore?) and
breathing inspiration and life into the piece. Among
the three soloists, former Adler Fellow Leah Crocetto in effect had
walked
across the street from the Opera House and made the mass glow with her
lyric-soprano
solos.
Schubert must have had rough sledding in his years of church-singing
with the Vienna Choir Boys. In all six masses that he composed later
on, he pointedly omitted the mandatory Latin text for "I believe in
one, holy catholic and apostolic church" every time.
These
concerts
by the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus
in Ives and Schubert continue through Feb. 6 at 8 p.m, under Michael
Tilson Thomas' baton. For
info: (415) 864-6000, or go online.
Broadcasts on KDFC-FM (102.1) at 8 p.m. on the second Tuesday following.
©Paul Hertelendy 2010
#
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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