WA Sinfonietta makes energetic debut with Neidich as conductor-soloist
It seems that, just when one needs a dose of hope for the world and for classical music in particular, along comes another “developmental” orchestra packed with young musicians who can play like the dickens.
The latest entry in this field, the WA Sinfonietta founded by clarinetist and conductor Charles Neidich, made an auspicious debut Sunday night at the Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church near Lincoln Center, with energetic performances of music by Mozart, Mendelssohn and Brahms.
The ensemble’s name has nothing to do with a state in the Pacific Northwest, but is derived from the Japanese concept of “wa,” meaning (as Neidich puts it) “a circle or ring symbolizing harmony, completeness, the continuity of past, present, future, and the unity of all humankind.”
Lofty words but musicians through the ages have testified to the importance of a philosophical foundation to their work, imparted by their teachers or fellow musicians. And Sunday’s players, highly accomplished musicians on the brink of professional careers, exhibited plenty of harmony, continuity and unity under Neidich’s enthusiastic direction.
In fact, there was a feeling of chamber music intimacy about the evening’s first item, a performance of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with Neidich standing among the musicians and playing the solo part on a basset clarinet, the instrument for which Mozart originally composed the piece.
The basset, a striking-looking instrument with a sharply angled, egg-shaped bell, can play lower notes than more familiar types of clarinet, and Neidich delved into those smoky tones to great effect Sunday night. (Performances on this instrument involve some speculation, since the concerto was published for a conventional clarinet in A and Mozart’s original is lost.)
The first movement flew along at a brisk tempo, the orchestra swinging easily between vigorous and delicate passages. Neidich did little conducting per se, but led by example through his witty alternation of detached and legato phrasing.
Having described the piece to the audience as “more opera than concerto,” Neidich made good on his words with a long-breathed, deeply affecting Adagio any onstage heroine would be proud of. Orchestral strings echoed his sighing phrases, then warmly reprised the entire theme, whose hushed return later was an expressive high point. Soloist and orchestra made the most of the rondo finale’s playful theme and picturesque episodes.
Neidich stood on a modest podium and conducted without a baton for the program’s remaining two pieces, Mendelssohn’s Overture to Die schöne Melusine (1835 version) and Brahms’s Fourth Symphony. A stick might have benefited the broad but bounding 6/4 meter of Mendelssohn’s watery piece, which sounded a little vague in the execution. Without that clear rhythmic signature, the players had to rely on sheer energy to pull them through, instead of the intriguing textural contrasts they achieved in the Mozart.
That textural issue was all that stood between Sunday’s boldly committed rendering of the Brahms symphony and those of world-class orchestras. Neidich prefaced the performance with an account of the work’s premiere in 1885 by the Meiningen Court Orchestra, a modest-sized ensemble like his own and a Brahms favorite.
The composer himself conducted that premiere, and likely found a way to keep the horns from obscuring the strings in softer passages, as happened now and then Sunday night. When the spotlight was legitimately on them, however, the horns played with outstanding intonation and legato.
In the first movement, Neidich’s expressive gestures brought assertive playing in forte passages, but not enough lightening up at softer moments. The movement opened with a possible premiere: four bars of forte introduction that Brahms was persuaded to delete, but which proved on Sunday a strong frame for the quiet bars that followed. The movement’s brief but powerful coda was entirely satisfying.
The second movement stepped along exactly as marked, Andante moderato, and was distinguished by ever-more-eloquent settings of its warm, arch-shaped third theme. The exciting Allegro giocoso had plenty of timpani punch, nimble execution by strings and winds, and artful loud and soft playing by trianglist Julian Dippolito.
It can be hard to achieve enough textural contrast amid the flow of a sonata-form movement, but a theme-and-variations such as this symphony’s closing passacaglia gives conductor and players a chance to focus on the character of each variation in turn, which they did superbly Sunday night. Brasses opened boldly with the theme, woodwinds responded mysteriously, and strings dug deep for their most robust tone. Each section of the orchestra did itself proud as the spotlight fell on it, and Neidich made sure the unfolding drama of the whole movement was kept in view right up to the fierce conclusion.
The large audience, with a sizable component of the musicians’ friends and family, could hardly be called unbiased, but the new orchestra really did earn its ovation. Neidich responded by shaking hands with all the first-chair players, then plunging through the chairs and music stands to do likewise with every member of the orchestra. It was Sunday in a church, and the WA was palpable.
The WA Sinfonietta will perform works by Mieczysław Weinberg and Gideon Klein, May 13 at the DiMenna Center. artenafoundation.org
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