bells and brass

There were two major highlights to last weekend’s classical series concerts with the Oregon Symphony: Joshua Bell and our brass section. Due to changes in his calendar, Bell dropped the Shostakovich First Violin Concerto for the Brahms Violin Concerto. Basically, he was to perform the piece publicly for the first time this season, but several of his other engagements had dropped that piece, and he was left with only one performance, which must not have made it worthwhile to get up to performance shape – as Bell himself said in an interview with the Oregonian‘s James McQuillen:

“The Shostakovich is new for me, I have yet ever to perform it, and when we schedule these things two or three years ahead of time, it came down closer to the time, it didn’t fit in. I had so many things piled up on my schedule, and the other places where I thought I’d also play the Shostakovich fell through, and so I ended up with a single place to play it, and it didn’t make sense any more to juggle all the other repertoire I was doing.  Unfortunately, I’m going to have to wait a whole season to introduce the Shostakovich into my repertoire. It’s a piece I’ve been looking forward to, and you want to do it right the first time.”

However disappointing the substitution was for some (many in the orchestra included, and presumably Bell, himself), the chance to get to do the Brahms again with Josh was pretty good consolation. The last time I’d played the Brahms with Bell was my first season with the orchestra, and I remember being very impressed with it at the time. It was just a couple years after he’d recorded it, along with the Schumann concerto, with the Cleveland Orchestra for Decca. What most impressed me at the time, other than the usual virtuoso attributes was that he’d written his own cadenza for the concerto. This was (and is) not so much in fashion as it had been in the earlier part of the 20th century, and the fact that it was a good, well-written cadenza was a pleasant surprise.

This past weekend, all of the above were still present, and what most impressed me this time around was the variability (subtle though it often was) of his interpretive choices from one performance to the next. The cadenza was still wonderful, and I was struck even more this time by his influence of the solo works of Ysaÿe (with whom Bell’s teacher, Josef Gingold, himself had studied) in its figurations. But the flexibility and interactivity with the orchestra was much greater even than his appearance with the Oregon Symphony in the Bruch Concerto a couple years back. Indeed, we were told Tuesday morning by Carlos that Bell loves playing with us, and said “the opening tutti of the Brahms Concerto sounded the best I’ve ever heard it”, and that would account for the deep involvement that we all felt with this great artist during the rehearsals and performances (which numbered four this time, with a runout to Salem on Friday night). Another aspect of Bell’s playing that I enjoyed was his risk-taking. He was willing to sacrifice a bit of polish, both in intonation and tone quality, to get the point across. He is clearly comfortable in his own artistic skin, and so the polished perfection has given way to a burnished maturity that shows slight signs of history rather than wear. Josh said he’d love to come back as often as possible, so much is his enjoyment of playing with our orchestra, and the feeling is mutual.

And now to the brass. They made their mark across 3/4ths of the concert. They opened the concert with a brief fanfare by the Renaissance composer Adriano Banchieri entitled The Battle. After the Brahms, the reasserted themselves (the horns and trumpets) in Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, and then, finally in all their glory, the massed group tackled the many sonic splendors of Leos Jancek’s Sinfonietta (in its reduced version with ‘only’ six trumpets). It was in the Janacek that several things made themselves quite evident. First, our brass are amongst the best playing today. The opening fanfare of the Janacek was so solid, so grounded, so in-tune, and so kick-ass, that it was simply inspiring and impressive to me each night. Second, though they can play as loud as anyone when they chose to, they seldom take it to ‘eleven’. Instead, they wisely bide their time and always keep something in reserve, which means that their crescendos seem like they could go on forever, and there is always another step up in volume available. That is seriously hard to achieve, and only a skilled and experienced set of great players can pull that off in the heat of an impassioned performance.

Other news from this weekend’s concerts: we had another guest concertmaster, this time the concertmaster of the now-defunct Syracuse Symphony, Jeremy Mastrangelo. He acquitted himself well, leading with grace and ease. Our new principal flute, Jessica Sindell, played wonderfully all weekend, and is quickly assimilating herself into the sound of our stellar wind section, to which was added our wonderful acting third flute/piccolo, John McMurtery of the New York City Opera orchestra.