Oundjian, Hadelich, and Yale Philharmonia dazzle in Britten, Berlioz, and Tower redux
Would you like to have been the person who looked at Joan Tower’s Grammy-winning Concerto for Orchestra and said to her, “We can do without two-thirds of this piece”?
Somebody must have said that, and she must have concurred, because there she was onstage at Carnegie Hall Monday night with conductor Peter Oundjian and the Yale Philharmonia, taking a bow for something called “Suite from Concerto for Orchestra,” which had just received its world premiere, on a program with music of Britten and Berlioz.
Just as one was setting the critic’s dial to “outrage,” a listen to the original concerto revealed an unwelcome truth: At its original length, for all its rhythmic pizzazz, virtuoso playing, and kaleidoscopic orchestration, Tower’s work considerably overstays its welcome. Even when the tempo is Presto, there are long stretches of waiting around for something to happen.
Conductor/editor Oundjian was doing the piece a favor, as he tactfully wrote, by “rendering it more flexible to program.” So now this pared-down version served the familiar role of curtain-raiser Monday night, placed before Britten’s Violin Concerto, with Augustin Hadelich as the sweet-toned soloist, and a high-octane performance of Berlioz’s extravagant Symphonie fantastique.
The Suite from Concerto for Orchestra proved a consistently exciting ride, showcasing the many and varied talents of this premier orchestra of the Yale University School of Music. Swiftly growing, like the original work, from a deep, soft unison F-sharp, the piece was soon delivering Beethovenian syncopations, Rite of Spring-style booms and slashes, and a host of other orchestral textures with few precedents anywhere.
Long horn lines were jostled by dissonant string chords, rocketing scales spurred angry brass ripostes, and high woodwinds sounded the alarm. By her account, the composer had originally resisted the title “concerto” for the piece, with its connotations of empty display, but display it did on Monday, to the delight of a hall packed with the orchestra’s well-wishers.
While many musicians were fleeing Europe ahead of the cataclysm of World War II, Benjamin Britten was returning to the United Kingdom from a sojourn in the United States. Just before doing so in 1939, he composed his Violin Concerto, a piece that for all its charm is beclouded by world events.
Soloist Hadelich, whose residency at Yale includes giving private violin lessons and master classes, turned in an exemplary performance, long-breathed in the opening Andante con moto, focused and intense as the music picked up speed, without losing a certain playfulness. Britten’s sympathy for Spain, then in the throes of civil war, could be heard in an episode with Aragonese rhythm, graceful yet also a little anxious. The movement closed with the soloist floating high above dark chords in the orchestra, pianissimo.
The motoric Vivace struck a sarcastic Shostakovichian note, with the soloist scampering amid lightning flashes of woodwinds and taunting with quick glissandos. Under Oundjian’s baton, the orchestra was both a worthy antagonist to Hadelich’s violin and, in some high, rapid passages, an exceptionally well-coordinated and tuned partner.
A meditative solo cadenza, though colored with harmonics and left-hand pizzicato, mostly forewent display in favor of making a bridge to the earnest finale. Closing a concerto with a passacaglia was another nod to Britten’s Soviet counterpart, with the learned baroque ground bass form emphasizing serious intentions over razzle-dazzle. Nevertheless, Hadelich impressed with exuberant solos and sustained high pianissimo at the close, while Oundjian boldly shaped tutti variations in waltz and march rhythms.
The well-crafted performance drew sustained applause and a tender solo encore from Hadelich, the Andante from Bach’s Solo Violin Sonata No. 2.
Amid the rampant emotions of the Symphonie fantastique, one could forget that it begins with a movement in sonata form. Not conductor Oundjian, who led the violins in an opening statement of the idée fixe theme sturdy enough to hang a large form on. Then the orchestra stayed with him through all the music’s mad dashes and hairpin turns.
Conductor and players swayed together through all the waltzing press-aheads and stretches of the second movement’s ball scene, capturing its languid mood, even if some of the staccato filigree proved hard to coordinate. Berlioz intended the strongest possible contrast between this glittering, urbane spectacle and the third movement’s scene in the country, lonely and ultimately serene, and he got it from Oundjian’s timing of the long silences and natural sounds.
It was back to spectacle for the fourth movement, the symphony’s cinematic march to the scaffold, with a tight ensemble of fiercely descending cellos, jeering winds, and exultant brass painting the scene in sonic Technicolor.
Then the orchestra topped itself with the fury of the witches’ sabbath Finale, starting with the ominous gathering of the shades and the grotesque entry of the idée fixe, then turning up the heat with clanging chimes, the “Dies irae,” jabbing brass syncopations, and a hectic fugue, all crisply executed right up to the blazing finish. On the brink of professional careers, the young musicians of the Yale Philharmonia showed they were ready to play in the major leagues.
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