THE AGELESS MULTI-TASKER LORIN MAAZEL IN WASHINGTON 
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Oct. 18-25, 2009
                                                                  Vol. 12, No. 26
          WASHINGTON, D.C.---Just half a year short of his 80th birthday, conductor Lorin Maazel remains an astonishing  dynamo, guest-conducting on both sides of the Atlantic, leading without a score, and contributing some music of his own at the National Symphony concerts of Oct. 15-17. 
            I suppose we could carp about his  programming a youth-concert piece for a mainline subscription audience, or about moving the string basses away from the cello section, or about his letting the brass sections run wild in the musical version of broken-field-running for the Franck symphony. 
            But overall, he injects solidity to the enterprise in a varied and relatively modern program, bringing the Kennedy Center audience to its feet. His approach is thoroughly vigorous. 
            The highlight was the Franck Symphony in D Minor (1888), which took a while to catch on---Germans worried because it was French-Belgian, while the French worried that it sounded too German. In the end, Franck bridged cultures with a fascinating, sure-fire piece full of unforgettable themes and, more significantly, music from earlier movements reprised and revised in the finale. Maazel led this with vitality; if the brass was too loud, at the other extreme he got a refined sound out of the strings in the Allegretto. 
            Maazel put his eight string-bass players on high risers across the back, away from the cellos. This was great for audience viewing,  but debatable given the close coherence of cello and bass parts. 
            His own composition, "The Giving Tree" (1998) for orchestra, solo cello, and narrator, seemed a curious choice for this occasion. It takes a children's tale by Shel Silverstein  dealing with a talkative tree's unselfish interactions involving a spoiled child growing up. Much of the child's conniptions are played with outbursts from the solo cello (David Hardy), while the tale was narrated by Maazel's wife, Dietlinde Turban-Maazel. 
            I don't know what to make of violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonenberg, who comes on in bright red pants and dances about during her concerto, just as if she were a reveler at the Carnival in Venice. I could best appreciate her solos in the Barber Violin Concerto with my eyes closed, as she played it with fervor, enthusiasm, and technical command, particularly the last movement which originally had been turned down (by another) because it was deemed too difficult to play. For Nadja, it was child's play. And when I opened my eyes, applause flooded the house and the patrons stood, with ample justification. 
            Fortunately, when she is working as violinist-conductor of the New Century Chamber Orchestra in the Bay Area, she foregoes these eye-catchers and focuses on less distracting group music-making. 
            The program also contained Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain," a highly pictorial piece of diabolic allusions that really worked in Disney's animated movie "Fantasia," but seems merely splashy, brassy and repetitive without the visuals.
            National Symphony at the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C., Ivan Fischer principal conductor. For info: (202) 467-4600, 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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