Doctor Symphonic
Last March Nate and I selected our traditional mutual-birthday-gift concert as the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra's premiere of John Adams's "Doctor Atomic Symphony," the spinoff from his 2005 opera. (Which Nate and I attended in San Francisco over Columbus Day that year, one of the better long weekends I've ever spent, and so far the most distance we covered in a concert jaunt. Incidentally, I'm going to miss the frequency of concert attendance I've enjoyed with Nate on the East Coast over the last few years, now that he's on the West Coast.) Adams didn't finish the spinoff symphony, so instead we got to hear a blazing rendition of Harmonielehre, which by any fair accounting was just as good. I didn't take this as unfinished business, but I'm happy that I was able to hear the actual Carnegie Hall premiere of this piece, which arrived 11 months late this weekend.
The BBC Orchestra had the world premiere of this piece last summer; I listened to the online broadcast at the time and came away unimpressed. Adams subsequently cut the piece down from 40 minutes to 25, which was a good move. (Alex Ross linked to this concert report that I think draws from the preconcert talk, which I didn't attend.) The resulting work is a single movement, instead of three; "Symphony" is a pretty big overstatement.
When I watched the opera, I thought the orchestral writing was incredibly powerful, creating a deep, unstable undertow to the action onstage and illuminating it in places with an eerie, resonant sonic aura. In its orchestral setting it's a lot less impressive, often unable to escape the impression that it's accompanying something that isn't there, and lacking the textural nimbleness that's one of Adams's greatest strengths. The one transformation that holds up on its own merits is the "Batter My Heart" aria, which concludes the Symphony: with the vocal line given over to a trumpet, this music sounds like an evocation of a military memorial. (Susan Slaughter, the SLSO's principal, played this with heroic presence and sensitivity.) The preceding twenty minutes are more than listenable (it's a joy to be hearing recent Adams in concert in the first place) but don't stick in your ears nearly as much. It's worthwhile, but it's still pretty much a pastiche.
The SLSO performed it exceptionally well, which was no surprise after the quality of the first three quarters of the concert. (Oh, also, it's really nice to hear the weighty premiere actually programmed at the end of a concert, where it belongs.) Robertson led a fantastically clear rendition of Sibelius's Tapiola right before the Adams. I find Tapiola aesthetically interesting as an abstract canvas done in a romantic language, but emotionally it doesn't do much for me. I'm not sure it's necessary to append adjectives to a Christian Tetzlaff performance of the Berg Violin Concerto, but you can start with "good" and ratchet it up a ways; the orchestra was honest-to-god luminous, too (major shout-out to the clarinet section). This concerto really rewards repeated close listening; having a chance to hear it performed so exquisitely basically pays off whatever effort you may have thrown into studying 20th-century music theory. Tetzlaff's encore was, appropriately enough, something from one of the Bach partitas or sonatas. This basically pays off whatever effort mankind at large may have thrown into studying the audible resonant properties of strings.
When a concert like this starts with something like the Brahms Tragic Overture, you can often expect an under-rehearsed and dashed-off performance. Instead it was as finely detailed and attentive as you'd want it to be. This is yet another reason to be a huge David Robertson fan.
The BBC Orchestra had the world premiere of this piece last summer; I listened to the online broadcast at the time and came away unimpressed. Adams subsequently cut the piece down from 40 minutes to 25, which was a good move. (Alex Ross linked to this concert report that I think draws from the preconcert talk, which I didn't attend.) The resulting work is a single movement, instead of three; "Symphony" is a pretty big overstatement.
When I watched the opera, I thought the orchestral writing was incredibly powerful, creating a deep, unstable undertow to the action onstage and illuminating it in places with an eerie, resonant sonic aura. In its orchestral setting it's a lot less impressive, often unable to escape the impression that it's accompanying something that isn't there, and lacking the textural nimbleness that's one of Adams's greatest strengths. The one transformation that holds up on its own merits is the "Batter My Heart" aria, which concludes the Symphony: with the vocal line given over to a trumpet, this music sounds like an evocation of a military memorial. (Susan Slaughter, the SLSO's principal, played this with heroic presence and sensitivity.) The preceding twenty minutes are more than listenable (it's a joy to be hearing recent Adams in concert in the first place) but don't stick in your ears nearly as much. It's worthwhile, but it's still pretty much a pastiche.
The SLSO performed it exceptionally well, which was no surprise after the quality of the first three quarters of the concert. (Oh, also, it's really nice to hear the weighty premiere actually programmed at the end of a concert, where it belongs.) Robertson led a fantastically clear rendition of Sibelius's Tapiola right before the Adams. I find Tapiola aesthetically interesting as an abstract canvas done in a romantic language, but emotionally it doesn't do much for me. I'm not sure it's necessary to append adjectives to a Christian Tetzlaff performance of the Berg Violin Concerto, but you can start with "good" and ratchet it up a ways; the orchestra was honest-to-god luminous, too (major shout-out to the clarinet section). This concerto really rewards repeated close listening; having a chance to hear it performed so exquisitely basically pays off whatever effort you may have thrown into studying 20th-century music theory. Tetzlaff's encore was, appropriately enough, something from one of the Bach partitas or sonatas. This basically pays off whatever effort mankind at large may have thrown into studying the audible resonant properties of strings.
When a concert like this starts with something like the Brahms Tragic Overture, you can often expect an under-rehearsed and dashed-off performance. Instead it was as finely detailed and attentive as you'd want it to be. This is yet another reason to be a huge David Robertson fan.
4 Comments:
BTW, forgot to say prior that it's nice to find your blog and to read your thoughts. I'm living in St. Louis now and heard the concert here that went to Carnegie (mostly), except that we got Radu Lupu for Mozart 23 in place of the Berg and Tetzlaff. Tetzlaff was in town earlier in the season for the Szymanowski 1st Violin Concerto.
I'm going to miss my frequent cultural meet-ups with Jack on the eastern seaboard as well. Though I hope that being in Oregon will actually make me less jealous of his access to New York, since getting there from the West Coast for the odd Saturday night is almost completely undoable, whereas from D.C. it usually seemed just barely undoable.
I'll be interested to hear the pared-down Doc Atomic Symphony when I can. I listened to the BBC broadcast online last year too and my main impression was that it was too linear, if that makes any sense. Adams seemed to be doing something in between traditional romantic symphonic development and straight-up thematic medley. It sounded noodly and thin and ultimately more or less inconseqential; he's better at macro-level, gradual changes in momentum or (more recently) Ives-y atmospherics than at taking his music from Point A to Point B. Though I think it's fair to say that Adams never really worked out what the symphony is supposed to do, and that's probably the main source of its structural problems.
"Batter My Heart" did work well as a conclusion though. I think it's just a more robust piece of music than what's around it in either the opera or the symphony, though -- able to provide its fire-n-brimstone joys in a wide range of contexts and probably destined for future Best of Adams albums.
That Robertson / SLSO Harmonielehre was a revelation for me, easily one of the best performances I've heard in the past several years. Just as well that Adams didn't finish the symphony on schedule.
Thanks George, I appreciate it! Have a good time in St. Louis -- I visited there for the first time last summer & was surprised how much there was to do there.
Even though St. Louis obviously can't match NYC for sheer concentration and density of cultural events (but then no other US city can), at least in St. Louis, one can pretty fairly catch everything of interest without having to sacrifice events, in my experience. Of course, however, one needs a car to get to everything here (the Midwest, ya know), and public transport is far from NYC or Chicago in allowing people to get everywhere, but that gets into the whole population base thing, way off the topic of this thread.
BTW, you knew that there is going to be a commercial recording of the Doctor Atomic Symphony, right? It'll be on Nonesuch, coupled with Guide to Strange Places, which is scheduled for opening weekend of SLSO 2008-2009.
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