Wednesday 7 December 2016

Leaving a Big Impression

I am scandalously late with posting this review of a concert in mid-November.  My apologies.

Pity the poor orchestral percussionists.  Of all sections of the orchestra, they're the least likely to get featured solos although the odd exception does exist here and there.  But then there's the senior member of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Patricia "Patty" Krueger, who serves as the orchestra's principal keyboard player and doubles on percussion.

At the last concert I went to, conductor Rob Kapilow made a point of complimenting her and pointing out the rarity of having a single performer who combines these two roles.  The orchestra applauded and stamped with greater vigour than usual -- and now I think I know why.

Patty is retiring.  And as a special treat for her final season, the orchestra's management let her go out with a bang by playing the organ part in Camille Saint-Saens' Symphony # 3 in C Minor, Op. 78, composed in 1886 and better known simply as the Organ Symphony.  

I've had a love affair with this piece ever since I was a teenager.  I endured a lot of teasing from one particular family member as a result.  Then, as I got older and learned more about music, I realized what a truly remarkable piece it is.  Of all the musical works inspired by Liszt and Schumann and their concepts of the cyclical transformation of themes, this is one of the most outstandingly successful.  At the same time, it makes use of thoroughly classical procedures in the structure of its themes, and in the organization of its two parts.  Indeed, the way that almost all the musical substance of the entire work grows organically (pun intended) out of the two short phrases in the slow introduction and the first main theme of the allegro is little short of miraculous.  And if all that were not enough, Saint-Saens added two instruments until then almost unknown within the symphony orchestra: the piano and the organ.

This symphony comes high on my list of works which absolutely must, must be heard in live concert to be fully appreciated and felt.  That is, of course, largely (but not entirely) because of the organ part.  Modern recordings can certainly capture the notes, but you'd need a theatre-auditorium-sized sound system in your home to reproduce the physical impact, the quivering in the air caused by the quiet, deep pedal notes in the second movement, or the striking force on the ears of the enormous block chords (also with bass pedals) in the finale.  There are a number of places where a great blast from the brasses in chorus smacks the ears with true physical force.  And that physical dimension is what brings the audience out of the woodwork whenever the symphony is performed.

(By the way, many recordings of this symphony (beginning with Daniel Barenboim for Deutsche Grammophon in 1976) have adopted the trick of recording the organ part separately, and then editing it into the tapes of the orchestral sessions.  If you've ever heard a recording that sounds like organ and orchestra are playing in two different halls, this is likely the reason -- they are!)

I hadn't originally planned to go to this concert, but when I found out that this was Patty Krueger's swan song I simply had to come.  She's always been a real joy to watch from the audience because she plainly derives so much joy herself from the act of playing music!  Naturally, Roy Thomson Hall's movable organ console was placed prominently at front stage tonight.

And therein lies the irony: as prominent and glorious as the organ part inevitably sounds, it's actually not terribly complex from a technical standpoint.  The real challenge of this symphony lies in the work of trying to achieve balance so that the organ doesn't swamp the orchestra, so that the piano doesn't get lost in the shuffle, so that all the many intricacies of string and wind parts don't disappear under a roaring tide of brass and organ sound.  The conductor must manage all of that, while also dealing with such complexities as the steady acceleration through the closing pages, complete with multiple changes of time signature.

Naturally the Organ Symphony was placed at the end of the programme.  The first half of the concert also produced remarkable music for our consideration.

Guest conductor Gianandrea Noseda opened the concert with a rare piece by Alfredo Casella, entitled Elegia eroica.  Written during World War One, this three-movement work plainly shows the composer's attempts to bring Italian orchestral music into the central European mainstream.  The opening allegro and third-movement presto both recall to mind the late Mahler, heavily cross-bred with the Stravinsky of the Rite of Spring.  It was in the more sombre adagio assai and the final "lullaby of death" coda that the music took on a truly moving "elegiac" character.  Noseda has done much work to return the music of Casella to prominence, and he plainly had the measure of this unusual score.

The next work was Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, a sharply-contrasted lightweight work after the much heavier orchestration of Casella.  Not lightweight in skill, of course, nor in interest, but only in using a much smaller neo-classical orchestra.  Soloist for the Concerto was Stefano Bollani, and he delivered a fine account of the solo part: lean in tone, precise and neat-footed throughout, and yet with plenty of bravura in the dramatic passages.  His playing in the slow movement could only be described as a thing of beauty from start to finish.   The orchestra's scaled-down contribution was also finely shaped and shaded to the character of the piece -- gentle when necessary, and more overt in some of the jazzy passages which sound so like Gershwin and even prefigure the blatantly sardonic Two-Piano Concerto of Francis Poulenc.

After the intermission, Maestro Noseda led the orchestra in what I would call a "central" interpretation of the Saint-Saens symphony.  Tempi were all nicely placed in relation to each other, and there were no intrusive interpretive liberties taken with the score.  The first movement was taken at a reasonable speed so that all the repeated notes in the string parts sounded clearly, without the blurring that a hectic rush would cause.  The slow movement brought warm tone from strings, and gentle shading of the slow diminuendo over the organ pedals in the final bars.  The scherzo, again vigorous without being overdone, had plenty of oomph from the timpani.  The piano scales in the trio section were ripped off with style to spare (I could not see who the pianist was, nor could I see the piano from my seat).  The dying fall-away at the end of the movement was again managed beautifully.

As with the opening, the finale was taken at a moderate but near-ideal tempo, and the organ at first was nicely scaled so that, while firm and clear, it didn't outshout the orchestra.  The one sad flaw was that the beautiful four-hand arabesques for the piano were inaudible.  Better balance was needed here.  The movement rolled on with the right sense of unstoppable energy, and with the organ pedals taking on additional weight as the music progressed.  The closing pages with their frequent tempo changes were managed to near-perfection and when Patty opened up the true "big guns" of the organ in the final bars the extra power of the sound was indeed overwhelming.

Now, if you don't yank the audience to their feet at the spectacular end of the Organ Symphony there's something wrong.  But this standing ovation was in another league altogether.  Prolonged cheering, shouting, clapping, stamping, and all for the organist.  The orchestra players were making enough noise to be heard even over the volume from the audience, and refused to stand when summoned by the conductor.  Patty Krueger was presented with a bouquet of red roses, and then something happened that I have never, ever seen before in nearly half a century of concert going in Toronto and half a dozen of the world's musical capitals.

Maestro Noseda invited her up onto the podium with him, hugged her, and then stepped down and left her standing on the podium to receive all the applause and cheers herself.  No wonder she was on the verge of tears -- that's an unheard-of honour for a conductor to extend to a player. 

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