The
Greenwich Symphony opened its 54th season last night with a program that
celebrated youth.
Mozart was
27 when he stopped in the Austrian town of Linz in 1783. He was travelling back
to Vienna with his wife and stayed with some wealthy friends of the family. He
wrote his Linz symphony in only four days. Beethoven was 26 years old when he wrote
his Piano Concerto No. 1, and Ravel wrote his original music for “Ma mère l'oye”
(My Mother Goose) as a piano duet for Mimi and Jean Godebski who were age six
and seven at the time.
“So much
great classical music,” said the GSO conductor and music director David
Gilbert, “is written by, and for, and is played by young people. Enjoy and
marvel.”
It is
not every day that an orchestral concert opens with a symphony, closes with a
concerto, and has complete music for a ballet in the middle, and this event ran
a little long, but the music was so well chosen and so well crafted by the
orchestra that time flew.
The Linz
Symphony is music built from phrases with sharp edges. The
first movement has very few instances where two consecutive phrases have the
same number of measures. This is music of prose rather than the measured flow
of verse, and yet the content must sound effortless, delicate and poetic.
Gilbert is good at Mozart. He kept the orchestra
tilted forward so that phrases summed into larger structures that were clear
and eloquent. He took the first movement repeat but not in the sonata form
second and fourth movements. I liked the rustic Haydnesque stomp of the Menuetto,
and the finale spoke with festivity.
We
seldom get to hear the complete ballet music for “Ma mère l'oye” so this
performance was welcome. The preludes and transitions that the ballet music adds
to the five familiar movements we hear in the suite develop the trappings of
fantasy. They allow us to better enter the magical sound world of Ravel from our
digitized time.
The Linz Symphony used no flute or clarinets, so the
color of the flutes that sound at the opening of the Prelude in the “Ma mère l'oye” ballet music were
particularly vivid. The expanded percussion, English horn, contrabassoon, and celesta
further opened the palate, and created an aural stimulation like a walk through
Disneyland. Barbara Allen’s harp playing was particularly clean and vibrant,
and the section strings found careful balances to close the work and leave us
with a sense of wonderment in the “Fairy Garden.”
After
intermission, pianist Angela Cheng joined the orchestra as soloist in the
Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1. She played the energized side of the music fast
and bouncy with lively accents and chiseled figuration. But she played the
first movement development with too much sound; it took too long to get the
quieted magical texture that is so essential to this passage. Cheng played the
infamous “third cadenza.” This is the longest of the three that Beethoven wrote
for this work, and it was a perfect vehicle to showcase the intensity of her
playing.
“The
virtuosic cadenza,” said Gilbert earlier from the stage, “reminds us of what
Beethoven may have done at some of the parties and salons that he played where
he hypnotized everybody by his incredible improvisations.” The concerto was
well received.
The Greenwich
Symphony succeeded. They played the music of youth with the wisdom of
experience.
