New Jersey Symphony Orchestra Jeffrey Kahane (conductor and piano). Hindemith: Kammermusik No. 1, op. 24, No. 1; Ravel: Piano Concerto in G; Walker: Lyric for Strings; R. Schumann: Symphony No. 2 in C, op. 61. Community Theater, Morristown.

One of the most varied and intellectually stimulating concerts encountered since the glory days of Waterloo led to some ruminations on both the music presented and its surrounding history.

The afternoon was entitled "Kahane Does It All!" (exclamation point included), and to be sure Jeffrey Kahane conducted the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, functioned as concerto soloist, and joined members of the orchestra as conductor and ensemble pianist in the opening work. In addition, he introduced the first work to the audience in an address that was witty and entertaining. The address included a humorous anecdote concerning Hindemith and Otto Klemperer, leading to my first rumination.

When I was first learning about classical music, Hindemith's reputation was that of a sober, pedantic composer of *"Gebrauchsmusik" and Klemperer was a conductor noted for his slow, granitic interpretations of the classics. However, Hindemith began as a bit of a musical bad boy composing works such as the Kammermusik performed at this concert, or operas such as Das Nusch-Nuschi (*I won't translate) and Neues vom Tage. Where were works such as these performed? Frequently at the Kroll Theater presided over by Klemperer. Their shift in reputation is a fascinating study.

In any case, Kahane warned the audience to expect a wild ride in the Hindemith, and sitting at the piano in shirtsleeves with his back to the audience he presented the work. Even eighty years after its premiere, the piece is still striking, although today's audiences may not be as shocked by the jazz or fire siren in the finale. It was an upbeat, fun opening to the afternoon.

After the stage was reset, Kahane, still in shirtsleeves, played and conducted the Ravel Concerto in G. Although I thought the first movement a bit heavy, lacking some of the "French fizz" associated with it, the rest of the concerto came off very well.

Playing and conducting is an activity that has been taken up by quite a few conductors. One thinks of Van Cliburn or Mitropoulos in the Prokofiev Third or Bernstein in this same Ravel concerto. After putting on his jacket, it was with another Bernstein specialty that Kahane chose to close the concert: Robert Schumann's Symphony no. 2.

There the similarity ended. Rather than the capital R, arch-romantic style favored by Bernstein with taffy pulling tempo fluctuations, Kahane offered a level-headed clean reading of the score.

If the trumpets and trombone in the initial statement of their motto theme were much too loud, it may have been as much a function of the theater and my location as the conductor. The first movement repeat was taken, and the great third movement Adagio had deep repose. A nice, lucent reading of what is perhaps the least played of the Schumann Symphonies.

The work that preceded the Schumann, Lyric for Strings by Pulitzer Prize winner George Walker of Montclair provoked the most thought for me. I admit that this is a work I knew only from reputation, rather than from actually having heard it. This piece, though the most recently composed (1946), was in many ways the most conservative of those presented at this concert. Described as Walker's "most familiar" composition, I have to wonder why we do not hear it more often. It is, simply put, a very beautiful piece of music. The Barber Adagio can be heard on every elevator in the city and no one hears Walker's piece. Perhaps the Barber should be put on the shelf for awhile, and works such as Lyric for Strings be brought out more often. Its neglect leaves me scratching my head.

All in all, it was an entertaining, thought-provoking afternoon.

Book Review
By Paul M. Somers

Dvorák in America: In Search of the New World by Joseph Horowitz. Cricket Books,
a Marcato Book, Chicago, 2003. 158 p., $17.95. ISBN: 0-8126-2681-8.

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra sets out on its Dvorák Festival this week, as we enter the 100th year since the composer's death (his actual death date was May 1, 1904). Antonin Dvorák's life is well worth celebrating by all, but for us Americans it is worthwhile in a very special sense. The question of what it is that makes American music, while it had been raised before by William Henry Fry before the Civil War, was raised again by Jeannette Thurber, the woman who brought Dvorák to America to find the answer and to head the National Conservatory of Music. The past century has shown that in many respects his answers still ring true in composition and in the legacy he left through his students.

In Dvorák in America: In Search of the New World, a book aimed at middle school and high schoolers, Joseph Horowitz has written an admirably readable account for kids by relying on narrative rather than on ponderously dense text. He makes the characters more real by creating conversations between them, using their well-documented remarks on various subjects as the basis. So instead of wading through reproductions of documents by Dvorák and New York Philharmonic conductor Anton Seidl, Horowitz places the two in a popular watering hole having a few beers like good middle Europeans and gives us their conversation. It's Horowitz's invention but entirely in keeping with their two characters, views, and actual remarks delivered in other places. It can't be footnoted, but it brings the two to life far better than any scholarly citation ever could.

We get to know Dvorák and his circle in America - who thought what, who wrote what, how and who they met, who influenced Dvorák and who he influenced. But instead of dry text Horowitz supplies narrative, presents pictures both in words and in century-old photographs and drawings which are an important part of the book. If early on he places too much exposition in someone's mouth, this awkwardness smoothes out very quickly and never again surfaces.

He creates some of Dvorák's 'letters' home, which are really made up of pieces of several letters to different people. They convey both the composer's joy in discovering a country new to him and his longing for his beloved Bohemia.

This kind of educational transparency is the most obvious way the book brings the subject matter to life for the students. But there is another level which suggests strongly that the book is not intended as the provenance of a school's music department but of the humanities or history departments. The subtitle of the book is In Search of the New World. Horowitz insists on asking kids to understand something of the America Dvorák visited, searching for the new world with him.

To extract a list of the subjects raised in this book is to find oneself looking at all the major issues of American history and culture. Race relations of course tops the list since Thurber and Dvorák both felt that the music of African-Americans should a major source of power in American music. This paramount issue is presented before we read one word about Dvorák, for the opening 'Prelude' is an account of the early life of Henry Burleigh, the African-American baritone from Erie, Pennsylvania, with whom Dvorák developed a special kinship, one might even say symbiosis, as the two taught each other things they needed to know.

In other areas of importance to an understanding of America, Horowitz takes the natural move from Dvorák's hobby as a rail fan to his journey to Spillville, Iowa. But consider how this opens to a teacher the opportunity to explore the role of transportation in establishing the American west or a consideration of modern transportation systems.

Horowitz lets us look at a Kickapoo Medicine Show which Dvorák's saw, a real piece of Americana. But consider that a crafty teacher will branch out to real Indian medicine, folk remedies, traveling shows of all kinds, and even the import of the move from whites in black-face to real African-American entertainers who traveled with the show.

Horowitz emphasizes the importance to Dvorák of Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha and includes illustrations of scenes from the long narrative poem. This, of course, not only opens up the importance of the now largely forgotten poem to both Europeans and Americans a century ago, but can lead to fruitful discussions of how we saw Native Americans then and see them now, how America has influenced Europe, how European nationalism influenced Longfellow (especially the Finnish Kalevala whose four-foot lines and repetition patterns he copied.)

The list of places the book can take a teacher and class beyond the text, yet be rooted in it, is extraordinary. Yet one never feels cheated because, for example, Wounded Knee is only mentioned. It is worth a mention and certainly worth further study, but it is not this story; it is something to note and go back to. Horowitz looks far but never loses his focus.

Having written a book which fits well in a history department, he makes it clear that music is an important part of history. When he recreates in words the premiere of the Symphony 'From the New World' it is quite touching. But with the larger context so well presented, one understands the social impact of the work and of Dvorák himself even as the personal triumph unfolds. Little details are also fun. My favorite was a passing mention that Dvorák's beard was reddish. It suddenly colorized all those black and white photos.

I found two odd little errors which have absolutely no effect on either the story or Horowitz's presentation of Dvorák's historical impact. It might be fun for a teacher to note how many students find them.
____

There is a companion DVD which should soon be available. Its richly varied interactive capabilities take all those side trips Horowitz's book holds as possibilities. Wounded Knee, for instance, is no longer simply to be noted, but is presented. And the score to two movements of the 'New World' Symphony is shown as the music plays and the measures are highlighted as they occur. But there is much, much more.

I saw it at a press briefing at which a still unfinished version was demonstrated. It was clearly not ready for release back then in early December. When it does reach the market it will have a very low price for such a product and will be one of the great educational buys available.

But the book is out now and will be enjoyable for adults as well as kids.

Announcement
Joseph Flummerfelt: Musical America's Conductor of the Year

Joseph Flummerfelt, artistic director and principal conductor at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, has been named 2004 Conductor of the Year by Musical America, the International Directory of the Performing Arts. He received his honor at a gala ceremony in New York on December 11. Also honored were Wynton Marsalis, Musician of the Year; George Crumb, Composer of the Year; Susan Graham, Vocalist of the Year; and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Ensemble of the Year.

Presenting him with the award, Musical America Editor Sedgwick Clark said "Joseph Flummerfelt is recognized as the foremost choral conductor of our time. In the words of New York Philharmonic Music Director Lorin Maazel, conducting a Flummerfelt-prepared chorus is like driving a Rolls just back from the only honest garage in town."

Joseph Flummerfelt's musical artistry has been acclaimed in many of the world's finest concert halls for more than 30 years. His rich and varied career has included collaborations with such eminent conductors as Abbado, Bernstein, Boulez, Dohnanyi, Giulini, Leinsdorf, Maazel, Macal, Masur, Mehta, Muti, Ozawa, Penderecki, Sawallisch, Shaw and Steinberg. His choirs have performed with many orchestras in the United States and Europe, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Vienna Philharmonic.

As the artistic director and principal conductor at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Joseph Flummerfelt inspires countless young musicians to combine discipline and exemplary attention to detail with artistic spontaneity. His choirs may be heard on nearly 40 recordings; including collaborations with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony and the National Symphony; as well as several recordings of the Westminster Choir under his direction. The Westminster Choir is also featured on the Grammy Award-winning recording of Samuel Barber's Anthony and Cleopatra. The Choir's all-Brahms recording, Singing for Pleasure, conducted by Flummerfelt, was cited in the New York Times as one of the critic's choices among all existing Brahms recordings.

He has also appeared as guest conductor of such orchestras as the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Spoleto Festival Orchestra in the United States and Italy, and the Bochumer Symphoniker in Germany. In April 2001 he conducted the New York Philharmonic and the Westminster Choir in a series of performances of Stephen Paulus' Voices of Light, commissioned to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the founding of Westminster Choir College of Rider University and the 30th anniversary of Maestro Flummerfelt's appointment to its faculty.

Joseph Flummerfelt is one of three artistic directors for the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. in Charleston, S.C. (since 1977), and for 23 years he was the Maestro del coro for the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. He is also the chorus master for the New York Philharmonic, founder and conductor of The New York Choral Artists and was for five years the music director of Singing City in Philadelphia.

His honors include le Prix du President de la Republique of L'Academie du Disque Français and two Grammy nominations. He has also received four honorary doctorates and is included in the International Who's Who in Music and in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians.

OPINION

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra's 2004-2005 season was unveiled recently. Some statistics drawn from the announcement are worth considering:

Of 31 guest artists (not counting pops of family concerts), 20 are male and 11 are female, a significant rise toward gender equality.

For many years the preponderance of programming was west of the Rhein, often west of the Danube. Next season the German-speaking composers will still predominate (12), and we'll have an equal number of Russians and (thanks to the "Northern Lights Festival") Scandinavians - seven each. But it is refreshing to note that we shall get to hear five American works, two of them are premieres, one by Lalo Shifrin and one by Canadian pianist Stewart Goodyear.

We also get to hear two works from the French literature and but one British work. The only Italian music happens on the opera night with, of course, Puccini and Verdi.

Among concertos we shall have five for violin, four for piano, and three for various trio configurations. Evelyn Glennie returns with a percussion work. Of the concerto soloists, five will be members of the NJSO.

There can be no doubt that the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark is the home base of the NJSO. Of the concerts we are counting, fully 33 will be there. New Brunswick's State Theater is a distant second with nine, Trenton's Patriot's Theatre has eight, Red Bank's Count Basie Theatre and the Harms Theater at the Bergen PAC will each have six, and at the bottom of the list are Morristown's Community Theatre and Princeton's Richardson Auditorium with only four concerts each.

There are, of course other concerts - pops, Nutcracker performances, and family events - which we have not counted. There is also a solo recital by New Jersey's virtuoso Joseph Kalichstein which will be at the NJPAC and a concert by Oslo String Quartet in Richardson Auditorium.

Music Director designate Neeme Järvi will lead six concert series, while a mix of returnees and new guests lead the remainder of the season.

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Dvorák in America: A resounding "pre-American" symphony. "Heresy" spoken.
Friday, January 9, 2004
By Paul M. Somers

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Anne Manson (conductor), Jonathan Spitz (cello).Dvorák in America Festival.
Dvorák: Two Legends from op. 83; Cello Concerto; Symphony no. 7. Prudential Hall, Newark.

The Symphony no. 7 dominated the first full concert of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra's Dvorák in America Festival. For some inexplicable reason it is the least played of the "big three" (I don't think I've ever heard symphonies 1-5 and heard no. 6 live but once by Cleveland in the late 1960s). It cannot be because the Seventh is lacking in thematic or developmental ideas; if anything it is filled with melody to a level approaching Mozartean prodigality.

Conductor Anne Manson led a taut performance which had shape and crackle to the rhythms and definition to all the many dynamic shades. Her ear for balance enhanced Dvorák's own. When her beat was studiously metronomic, it was for the purpose of creating a more effective *rubato at a phrase or section ending.

The busiest soloist of the evening was timpanist Randall Hicks. Had Ms. Manson handed out solo bows, his should have been the first. Every degree of dynamic nuance possible from timpani was realized through the judicious choice of just the right sticks for each passage and Hick's musicality of phrasing.

The principal woodwinds all had many solos, and each was played with a full degree of Bohemian romanticism. The four horns were a special case, for their playing was heroically, even hair-raisingly, brassy at all the big moments.

The rest of the brass, while lacking the solos which crop up in Symphonies Eight and Nine, provided the reliably in tune and rhythmically precise cushion upon which all the biggest moments rested.

The strings found themselves producing a collective sheen which, lacking the firm hand of an in-place music director, has been hit-or-miss for the past seasons. This time it was a hit.

The concert began with two of the ten Legends. As "legends" they seemed rather light-weight (at least when put side-by-side with the various "legends" by Sibelius), but as simple folk-tales they were just right. Manson did her best, it seemed, to make as much of them as possible, but Jungian evocations they simply are not.

The only work of the evening composed in America was the Cello Concerto in B minor. It is a work in which Dvorák shows himself at the peak of his powers as orchestrator. Time and again when I've heard this masterpiece I've marveled at the composer's ear which so clearly heard orchestral balance. Just the right pair of woodwinds (rarely if ever three or more players) for each passage is placed against the solo cello.

So it was a disappointment to hear Jonathan Spitz's solo work far too often disappear into Dvorák's carefully balanced score. I must speak what is no doubt considered heresy: I blame the "Golden Age" 1696 Stradivarius he was playing more than Mr. Spitz himself. The mid-range has no meat in it, at least when compared to his own instrument which, if memory serves me right, is a gutsy 18th century piece of woodwork.

Many passages in the lower and upper registers were lively and had deep expression. But Mr. Spitz was plagued with insecurity in *thumb-position, often resulting in repeated figures having different intonation at each iteration.

Again, the horns - here only three - were the heroes with the exciting rising fanfare passage. And flutist Bart Feller's light-as-a-feather duet with Spitz was immaculate.

The pre-concert conversation with Festival host Joseph Horowitz and Spitz explained the presence of certain thematic material which gave those who attended the free event something tangible to listen for during the concert proper. The performance of Waldruhe ("Quiet Woods") for cello and piano found both Spitz and Horowitz completely immersed in the music. Indeed, for emotional depth and technical consistency it was a far more satisfying performance by Spitz than the concerto.

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Changing its name
Expanding its rep
Sunday, January 11, 2004
By Don Martone

Baroque Orchestra of North Jersey, Robert W. Butts (conductor), Margaret Walker ad Catherine Carrison (flutes), Dan Sagi (clarinet), Daniel Foran (tenor). Corelli: Concerto Grosso, op. 6, no. 2; Mozart: Clarinet Concerto, Two arias from Don Giovanni; Mendelssohn: Symphony no. 4 ("Italian"). Grace Episcopal Church, Madison.

The Baroque Orchestra of Boonton has been offering concerts in our area since 1996. However, it's been a while since I attended one of their performances. The result of this absence was my amazement at the changes which this ensemble has undergone since my last visit. I was impressed.

For one thing, the organization has had a name change. Though still listed as The Baroque Orchestra of Boonton on the program cover, the literature inside the program lists the organization as The Baroque Orchestra of North Jersey. Indeed, none of their concerts take place in Boonton. Also, the scope of the music performed has shifted. This concert featured works from far into the Romantic era.

Some things remain the same. Most importantly, the orchestra is still conducted by its founder and music director, Robert W. Butts. However, Mr. Butts was a relatively inexperienced conductor when the orchestra was founded, yet now he regularly conducts both concerts and opera in this area and, in addition, conducts in Europe annually. I was impressed with the improvement in both his poise and his technique.

In respect to the orchestra itself, the number of players has increased, as has their skill. This was immediately evident in the opening work, Corelli's Concerto Grosso, op. 6, no 2. It featured the orchestra's flutists, Margaret Walker and Catherine Garrison, who gave a very fluid and composed account of their parts. In addition, the strings possessed a level of intonation which was greatly improved from my past experiences with this ensemble. Also, in the past, a work such as this might have formed the centerpiece of a concert, rather than merely the opening.

At the time of their origin, a typical concert would have included short arrangements of popular works or tunes. Now, the afternoon was scheduled to feature the Beethoven Violin Concerto and the Mendelssohn Fourth Symphony. Note, I used the phrase "scheduled to" because that's not the way the afternoon turned out.

The virus which had been attacking our area struck down the featured soloist for the Beethoven Concerto and at the last minute an emergency rehearsal was called and it was decided that the Mozart Clarinet Concerto would be offered in its place. The orchestra's first clarinetist, Dan Sagi, was soloist, and the presentation impressed on many levels. It proved to be much more than just a last minute run through. The orchestra played confidently, and Mr. Butts showed himself to be a fine accompanist.

However, the major credit should be placed with Mr. Sagi. In the best of circumstances the performance would have been a triumph, but under these last minute circumstances it was amazing. Sagi showed a remarkable amount of poise, not even allowing a break in his concentration when an apparently confused man walked through the audience up to the podium and between Mr. Sagi and the conductor. Mr. Sagi didn't flinch.

Two tenor arias from Mozart's Don Giovanni opened the second half of the afternoon. Daniel Foran, who possesses a fine, light tenor voice, sang "Dalla sua pace" and "Il mio tesoro." He dedicated his performance to his parents (they have fourteen children), and they were seen beaming from the rear of the auditorium.

The final work, the Mendelssohn Symphony no. 4 in A major ("Italian Symphony"), a composition that sits firmly in the Romantic era, received an energetic reading. However, I must admit that the work's difficulties seemed to tax the players, who up to this point had handled their assignments well. The first movement especially had a forced feeling to it and intonation suffered. In addition, the size of the organization forced some skillful yet quite noticeable re-scoring. It must be stated, though, that the spirit of the music was never compromised and Mr. Butts chose tempi which were appropriate and showed a sympathy for the composer's style. One hopes that most of the audience did not notice the instrumental changes and omissions.

The orchestra has come quite far in the years of its existence.

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“Shrinking” Gershwin
Speed demon
January 11, 2004
By Paul M. Somers

Richard Kogan, M.D. (piano).  Lecture/recital on the music of George Gershwin.  Presented by the National Association for the Mentally Ill, Mercer County Chapter.  Music Building, The College of New Jersey, Ewing.

Dr. Richard Kogan’s love and knowledge of the music of George Gershwin was evident immediately.  So was his insight into the workings of the composer’s mind.  This is because Dr. Kogan is a psychiatrist as well as a first-rate pianist (he’s also former NJSO music director Hugh Wolff’s brother-in-law).

            Of most use to those who would perform Gershwin (and by extension quite a number of other composers) was the news that the composer had a neurological and personality disorder which caused him to do everything at top speed.  Even his piano rolls and other recordings find him playing ballads at ridiculously fast tempi; he couldn’t help himself.  This carried into his composing: he wrote Swanee in 15 minutes on a New York City bus, and it went on to sell 2,500,000 sheet music copies.  Some non-musical activities were also described as taking place at light-speed.  As Kogan put it, “Gershwin lived with a central nervous system of *staccato not *legato.”

            Other snappy comments sparked off the stage.  The biggest laugh from an audience filled with mental health professionals and advocates followed Kogan’s remark on Gershwin’s psychiatrist: “Dr. Zilberg was the only analyst in New York City more arrogant than George Gershwin.”

            In the course of his spoken remarks Kogan gave some straight biography, described some of the influences on Gershwin (pianist/composer Rubin Goldmark and Joachim-trained violinist Will Marion Cook who was a leader of the Harlem Renaissance).  He also went into some detail on the brain tumor which finally took the young composer.

            But it was when Kogan sat at the piano to demonstrate a point or to simply play a full work that the lecture/recital took off.  For Kogan is the owner of an excellent technique which supports great musicality.  Those who, like this writer, had heard him last year, when he gave a riveting exploration of Robert Schumann, knew what to expect.  But the uninitiated were bowled over by the solo piano version of Rhapsody in Blue (unanswered: is the arrangement by Gershwin himself or Vernon Duke), Earl Wild’s arrangement of the Porgy and Bess Suite.  Most amazing to many was Kogan’s challenge to call out a Gershwin tune and he would play it.  He took all comers without hesitation.

            The health care professional I brought with me as a guest left the performance quite impressed.  So did I and for the same reason: the music.

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            What does Kogan’s observation on Gershwin’s central nervous system have to do with the interpretation of other composers’ music?  Just consider all the controversy around, say, Beethoven’s *metronome marks.  Who knows the state in which Beethoven lived which would affect his perception of speed?  Or is the calm, light touch Prokofiev brought to even his athletic works the “real” way to play his music, or was there something non-musical which drew him into “classical” interpretations of pieces others often play in attack mode?  Again, we cannot and so should not look to the composer for the final word.  Once released into the world it is the performer who has the responsibility of advocate.

 

 

 

Gil Shaham meets Dvorák. CSI meets The Twilight Zone.
Friday, January 16, 2004
By Paul M. Somers

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Vassily Sinaisky (conductor), Gil Shaham (violin). Dvorák Centenary: Inspiring America.
The Water Goblin, op. 107 (1896); Violin Concerto in A minor, op. 53 (1880); Symphony no. 8 in G major, op. 88 (1889). Prudential Hall, Newark.

Conductor Vassily Sinaisky is nothing if not dramatic, and thus the second program of the Dvorak Festival was tailor-made for him. Whether leading the orchestra and audience through the unfamiliar Water Goblin or accompanying the incomparable Gil Shaham in the far-too-seldom-played Violin Concerto or finally knocking everyone's socks off with the masterful Eighth Symphony, there was always direction and generation of emotion at a practically cinematic level.

The Water Goblin is a gruesome piece of gothic folklore which was rendered into poetic Czech by Karel Jaromir Erben (1811-1870). Everybody in Dvorák's Bohemia knew not only the bare bones of the tale but Erben's narrative. So when Dvorák openly began to compose *program music upon his return home from America, Erben's poems (Dvorák also portrayed three others by him) were a nationalist magnet. Much as Sibelius was drawn to the recently collected and poeticized Kalevala, Dvorák went to the legends of his native soil to create some of the most quintessentially Bohemian music ever composed.

Of course it was America which gave him this gift. It was the place where he had been given the mandate to find the musical soul of a foreign land, and his conscious efforts on our behalf freed him to shake off the shackles of the conservative classical Viennese school. His friendship with Anton Seidl, the most influential Wagnerian conductor in America, had its intellectual and artistic impact. No longer was Dvorák's nationalism to be strictly in the realm of folkdance evocations - always a formalist's delight - but now he moved into the darker realm of folklore. It was America's complete contrast with his homeland mated with his ability to find something which contemporaneous Americans actually identified as their own which gave him the freedom to dive into the world of theatrically evocative music.

The use of *leitmotifs in his tone poems is hardly innovative; Liszt and Richard Strauss were past and present masters. But Dvorák's motifs not only captured the essence of their subject while allowing thematic transformation, but carried with them a directness which echoed the directness of the folktales. Sinaisky was careful to allow all these elements to be revealed in whatever guise they appeared, yet made sure that the narrative thread was never lost in overly picky detail.

The orchestra played the "new" work with precision and passion. Solo bows were rightly given to the bass clarinet and english horn for their eerie *doubling and to the two tubists for their subdued duet. Flutist Bart Feller had a great solo but received no bow.

Put violinist Gil Shaham on stage and excellence emerges. After his performance I was left to wonder even more acutely just why among the late 19th century violin concerti Dvorák's is not played as often as the Tchaikovsky or the Brahms. Again we heard the worthy melodies, the orchestrations which surpass in sheer magic the other two concerti, and the most deliciously dancing finale of the three.

Sinaisky and Shaham certainly knew how to achieve perfect balances for the *pianissimo violin *passage work so the actual melodic material in the orchestra was dominant without making the violin's notes mere wasted energy. Again the orchestra played with feeling and precision. This time it was Lucinda Lewis whose horn solos were effective. And again Mr. Feller's flute impressed and again resulted in the same lack of solo bow. One audience member actually approached me during intermission to ask if I had noticed and had any idea why Feller was being ignored. I didn't.

The concert itself had trajectory, from its watery launch through its spectacularly rising violin flight. What put the concert into unforgettable orbit was the performance of the Symphony no. 8. For many this is the quintessential Dvorák symphony, not the Ninth with what they feel is its ersatz Americanism and strange ending. I'll agree with the positive judgment of the Eighth, but place the Ninth in another class of work rendering the comparison moot.

Be that as it may, this was by turns powerful, lilting, and delicate. The trumpets and trombones produced hair-raising climaxes, and the woodwinds and horns each impressed with special solo and ensemble efforts. The symphony is filled with long, exposed flute solos galore, which Feller handled at the highest level.

All evening timpanist Randall Hicks had made great music out of what must be the most interesting, independent, and soloistic timpani parts in 19th century literature. This was no surprise since he had already been an important force in the first concert of the Festival.

As the Symphony came to its gigantic conclusion the audience cheered and stood. Mr. Sinaisky had the full orchestra stand to receive the applause with him. When he returned to the stage he motioned to Bart Feller to stand. That he intended the ensuing ovation to stand not only for the Symphony but for Feller's work during the whole evening was made clear as he then backed off and stood among the violins while Feller received cheers from the knowledgeable audience. After he had brought various other soloists to their feet for bows, he motioned to Mr. Hicks. Not satisfied that this was enough recognition for someone who is always close to standing by the nature of his instrument, Sinaisky waded through the orchestra and shook Hicks' hand. The timpanist, a long-time favorite of the NJSO audience, received great cheers.

Again, those who attended the pre-concert Festival Prelude profited greatly. The Dvorák scholar Michael Beckerman and Festival host Joseph Horowitz performed a *melodrama by Zdenek Fibich which sets Erben's Water Goblin, thus providing the only full presentation and explication of the full text during the evening. The bizarre and gruesome conclusion - sort of CSI meets The Twilight Zone - proved to involve a dismembered goblin-human baby. The performance certainly gave one a taste of the now passé melodrama genre which would apparently be well worth reviving on occasion. After all, we heard a very successful performance of Richard Strauss's Enoch Arden in Princeton last season.

This writer would vote for a full orchestral work: Britten's The Rescue of Penelope, a most impressive melodrama.

Looking for new paths
Virtuosity in new contexts
Saturday, January 17, 2004
By Paul M. Somers

Palisades Virtuosi: Margaret Swinchoski (flute), Donald Mokrynski (clarinet), Ron Levy (piano), with Matt Sullivan (oboe), Bob McGrath (narrator), Ken Cro-Ken (videographer). Bloch: Concertino for Flute, Clarinet, and Piano; Godfrey Schroth: Variations on an Appalachian Carol premiere); Milhaud: Sonata for flute, oboe, clarinet, and piano (1918); Arnold: Divertimento (1952); Sullivan: Oh Boy (a kaleidoscopic adventure for acoustic oboe), and Intricate Simplicity (interpolations on Simple Gifts for electric oboe); Saint-Saëns: Caprice on Danish and Russian Airs as music for Andersen's The Ugly Duckling. Unitarian Society, Ridgewood.

A group which recently strode into New Jersey's active music scene is the Palisades Virtuosi. In addition to the simple fact that they live up to their name and make no bones about it, they are actively commissioning new works and exploring different kinds of concerts.

This one was a case in point. It contained the world premiere of Variations on an Appalachian Carol (I wonder as I wander) by New Jersey composer Godfrey Schroth. The concert also included two works for unaccompanied oboe by guest artist Matt Sullivan.

Not only that, but the concert took place in the midst of a rich exhibit of art pieces by Ken Cro-Ken. There was also an attempt at enlivening Darius Milhaud's 1918 Sonata for flute, oboe, clarinet, and piano by projecting a filmed view of natural shapes during the piece.

Finally, Saint-Saëns' Caprice on Danish and Russian Airs, also using the full quartet, brought special guest Bob McGrath on to join the ensemble as a narrator. It turns out that we are approaching the bi-centennial of the birth of Hans Christian Andersen, so at Mr. Sullivan's instigation pianist Ron Levy adapted the famous tale of the Ugly Duckling, and used the Caprice as descriptive music interspersed within McGrath's reading of the story. It was quite effective, no doubt to Mr. Saint-Saëns' great surprise had he been alive to hear it.

Other music was by Ernest Bloch and Malcolm Arnold.

Let's put aside any doubts as to the performances themselves. These three players and their guest oboist are first-rate musicians who never had one moment of insecurity or dull playing. The concert was filled with vital performances. And McGrath was, as one would expect, marvelous as the narrator. His good humor and professionalism came through as he read the story flawlessly, even though he had been given it only days before.

So with only praise due to the performers, let's look at how effective the various elements of the program were.

Mr. Schroth's music is widely varied in mood. Each of the many variations is clearly related to the modal folk-tune, but the scope of expression ranges from the mistily atmospheric to the theatrically dramatic. Even a comic waltz shows up. The melancholy melody is shown in new lights, though the final variation returns to the original mood if not the full tune. It proved to be a very effective work.

Milhaud's "crunchy" Sonata, to use flutist Margaret Swinchoski's apt word for it, could be used as a study in bi-tonality, doubtless extending at times beyond the use of only two keys into more. It is not often performed (strings do tend to dominate the chamber world) so it was a great pleasure to hear how well the 86-year-old work holds up. It is anything but dated, no doubt because Milhaud had great craft and knew how to write exciting music. The audience favorites were the final two movements. "Emporté" proved to be raucous fun, like an already crazy festival running completely amok. It is followed by "Douloureux". This is Ivesian in its inevitable building and multiple keys and levels of meanings. Though we usually associate Milhaud with Brazilian or French dances or wit, this final movement is quite serious and extremely evocative of sadness and mystery.

Ken Cro-Ken's film, which was played during the Milhaud work, was fascinating on its own, but was not designed to relate to the music except by chance. Had the music been by an *aleatoric composer, say an event by Barney Childs, this kind of thing might have worked. But when the score is so well crafted and intentional as Milhaud's, any additional elements must be just as tightly constructed to relate exactly to the music if the multimedia event is to have its full effect. It must be as well-though-out as fine choreography. So the film ended up being a distraction rather than an aid. Consistently steady camera work was not always achieved and would be an asset in any circumstance.

Cro-Ken's studio work is skilled. It was far more generally effective to have his artwork hung around the performing space setting a general mood, than to have the film. Yet the film was an experiment which had its moments, randomly serendipitous though they were.

Matt Sullivan's Oh Boy! - a kaleidoscopic adventure for acoustic oboe was framed by very effective multiphonics. Between these striking utterances the music was very fast *minimalism in which Sullivan executed *circular breathing. This is rather unusual for oboists. He did have to grab a few breaths, and he commented later that he's getting too old to sustain the concentrated effort demanded by that technique.

His other piece, Intricate Simplicity - interpolations on Simple Gifts for electric oboe, used a pedal to work a *sequencer. Sullivan's ability to electronically overlap sequences effectively evoked great space - for this listener a reminder of red rock cañons in the desert southwest, a far cry from the Shaker communities of the northeast where the tune was born. It was well-received, even garnering one cheer.

Malcolm Arnold's ever-so-British Divertimento, presented with no extra musical trappings, contains the sense of humor that would eventually find him engaged in creating some of Gerard Hoffnung's funniest send-ups for his 1950s fun-with-music festivals, hilarious send-ups of the ever-so-serious festivals which abound. Marked generally by an almost cartoon sensibility not unlike his American contemporary Paul Bowles, my favorite from Arnold was the "Maestros". Had it been written for brass it would have been legitimately regal; but of course it is for woodwinds, which makes it wittily pretentious. The *coda provided some of the most technically demanding work of the evening. But Arnold is not all goofiness: the Andantino is morose and obsessive with a two-note *ostinato in the clarinet bass line; and the final "Piacevole" is pastorale in mood, a calm afterward to the previous goings on.

The concert began with Mr. Bloch's {Concertino, an earnest and lyric work. Ron Levy's piano part was *filled with impeccably executed ink in the Allegro *fugue. The *subject is wonderfully disjunctive, and the piece concludes with a sudden jaunty *coda worthy of Ibert.

The concert was fascinating in its variety. And of course there were the players living up to the name they chose: the Palisades Virtuosi with emphasis on the latter.

So much for definitions of Hell
A great idea for New York’s subways
Sunday, January 18, 2004
By Mary Morse

Princeton Symphony Orchestra, Mark Laycock (conductor), Peter Odrekhivskyy, (accordion).  Peter Paul Kowprowski: Accordion Concerto; Robert Schumann: Overture to Hermann und Dorothea; Jacques Ibert: Divertissement (1930); and Francis Poulenc's Sinfonietta (1947).  Richardson Auditorium, Princeton.

Few people classify the accordion as a classical music instrument.  Accordions make us think of polka bands, reruns of The Lawrence Welk Show, or street corner musicians (with a monkey perched on the organ-grinder's shoulder).  But Peter Odrekhivskyy, a Russian émigré studying at the National Conservatory in Paris, has shaped his musical career around the idea that the accordion is, and deserves to be, called a classical instrument.

            Odrekhivskyy's debut with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra most unusual musical offering in the PSO's 2003-04 season - enchanted his audience.

            Conductor Mark Laycock, who counted himself among the enchanted, took to the microphone to introduce his guest and their serendipitous meeting: when Laycock first heard Odrekhivskyy playing Bach on a Paris subway platform, he thought someone "had installed an organ in the Paris Metro.”  After discovering that the mysterious organist was instead an accordion player, Laycock determined he would bring Odrekhivskyy to Princeton to play the Accordion Concerto by Peter Paul Kowprowski, a Polish émigré now living and
composing in Canada.

            It is worth knowing that in Paris the performers in the Metro are licensed through audition.  No terrible sax players doing Heart and Soul badly for three hours at a time in the Metro!

            The accordion seemed to dwarf Odrekhivskyy, a slight man dressed in a flowing-sleeved magenta shirt and black pants.  Apparently, one plays the classical accordion while seated.  In the concerto's first movement, "Festa,” the accordion's entrance sounded like a 1920s theatre organ prelude, a bit overdramatic.  Then, after a frenzied toccata, the accordion took on its own voice - a multi-layered solo turn that evoked the Parisian street scene in a way that enabled us to people it with our own characters and memories.

            The second movement, "Cantilena," described in Laurence Taylor's program notes as "the spiritual heart of the concerto," made us aware of the multiple harmonic possibilities of the accordion.  But it also made us aware of its limitations.  In this movement, without the orchestral silence that showcased the "Festa" solo, it became difficult to separate the accordion from the orchestra.  Odrekhivskyy's playing blended almost too readily with the various orchestral parts.

            The third movement "Finale,' with its dancing rhythms, brought the accordion to the forefront again.  The movement's dissonances seemed at odds with an instrument associated with easy harmonies, but Odrekhivskky's skill made dissonance seem natural and familiar.

            Kowprowski's concerto demanded a lot from listeners, and one hearing wasn't quite enough to totally appreciate the instrument at its center.  Fortunately, Laycock asked Odrekhviskky to also play Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, the piece that the maestro first heard in the Paris Metro.  And that piece, played with agility, precision, and love for both Bach and the accordion brought the audience to its feet.  Hearing such a familiar piece played on such an unfamiliar classical instrument made us truly understand Odrekhivskyy's achievement.  It was no surprise to learn that he was the 2002 First Prize winner at the National Conservatory in Paris.

            As usual, Laycock packed his program full of other musical goodies, including Robert Schumann's Overture to Hermann und Dorothea, Jacques Ibert's 1930 Divertissement, and Francis Poulenc's 1947 Sinfonietta.  Compared to Kowprowski and Bach, Schumann and Ibert were pleasant trifles, played smoothly.  The Poulenc work lasting nearly 25 minutes and the only
post-intermission piece, required much more intensity for its listeners and the PSO.

            Taylor's program notes again reminded us of Poulenc's revisionist bows to other composers with French connections - Saint-Saëns, Fauré, and Stravinsky.  Taylor especially noted the similarities to Fauré's "caressing strands of melody" in the third movement *Andante and the "Stravinskian spice" of the Finale movement.  Listening for these echoes made me more aware of Poulenc's rare ability to acknowledge musical inspiration without seeming derivative.  The PSO responded adeptly, with lovely clarinet and trumpet solos winding through the Andante and a vivacious Finale.

 

 

Dvorák in school
Students and NJSO members meet
Wednesday, January 21, 2004,
and Saturday, January 24, 2004,
Feedback session with pizza and salad in the NJPAC Site Building meeting room.
By Paul M. Somers

Dvorák Centenary, Inspiring America. Joseph Horowitz (host), ). Dvorák: String Quartet in F, op. 96 ("American"). Presented for selected students at Malcolm X. Shabazz High School, Newark;

The Dvorák Festival's reach was far beyond the confines of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra's concert venues and the Newark Museum's theater. The Festival went into three schools: Malcolm X. Shabazz High School (Newark), Columbia High School (Maplewood/South Orange), and a middle school in South Orange. In these three schools Joseph Horowitz and Robert Winter taught classes on the importance of Dvorák in the consideration of what is American. His seminal role in appropriating Native American and African-American cultures (even when his perceptions were mistaken) was shown as the modern basis of what makes American music.

Unable to attend all the sessions, or even a representative class of each teaching unit, I chose to attend the culminating class at Shabazz when a string quartet from the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra came to play the famous "American Quartet."

The students were obviously quite prepared with knowledge about Dvorák. Though the quartet itself seemed uncoached in how the presentation would most effectively reach the students, the students themselves pulled things together in order to make sense of it. The players got down to playing the piece movement by movement (what they are, after all, best at!) and this resulted in some intelligent commentary from the students. All had quite evidently read Horowitz's book Dvorák in America: In Search of the New World. When one player forgot the name of the Iowa town where Dvorák had summered one year, the kids (and another player) called out the correct name, Spillville. And when the descriptive elements of the music were discussed, they were very good at assigning possible meanings to various passages. It was also fun to see Dvorák's *syncopated clicking-over-the-rails "train trip" in the finale given an update: a couple of girls in the front row began to do the hand moves to a popular dance right in time with the rhythms of the piece.

Also included was mention of *pentatonicism (Horowitz noted that this quartet is probably the most pentatonic concert work he knows), and some other structural matters. Teacher Hassan Williams was on hand and made some of his own observations as well as prodding the students at the beginning of the class. The discussion and as much of the performance as was allowed by the union contract were taped by the television crew of the high school, thus making the experience educational at a number of levels.

This kind of relationship between Orchestra and schools is imperative if the manner of intellectual discourse which is the basis for classical music (and most western art) is to continue. Here we saw black kids, who are pigeonholed by commercial forces as strictly hip-hop, engage in well-educated and intelligent discussion of a classical music string quartet as part of a larger project: bringing to these kids an understanding of the relevance to them of a foreign-born composer who lived over a century ago and whose impact went beyond just music but reached into civil rights and an
elevation of black culture.

So it was a disappointment when the feedback session on Saturday evening in which the program participants from all three schools met over pizza nominally to discuss issues raised by the whole Dvorák course, lacked any tight focus. Instead of keeping to the subject of Dvorák and his impact, the kids were allowed to drift off into comparisons of favorite pop artists of the present and recent past.

This was because there was far too much latitude in the questions posed. It was also because the role of facilitator is one which takes some training and coaching. Though no one will deny the good will and honesty of the attempts of volunteer NJSO members to keep some level of focus at the tables into which the kids were divided, it was evident that their true expertise is in playing, and thank goodness for that! But it did not help the effectiveness of the session in achieving a sense of wrapping things up or of verbalizing the content of what the kids had learned during the course of the Festival.

While it seemed that the planners had hoped to prime the kids for hearing the NJSO's performance of the "New World Symphony" that evening (see review on page 22), the connection was left unexplored instead of reemphasized.

It is my own observation that such a discussion, if given tight focus by trained facilitators, would serve best as an introduction to the course, not as its conclusion. Peeling back the kid's current "in the box" ideas about what makes American music to finally introduce the elevation of African-American music and other American elements by Dvorák, would be a great way to introduce the subject to the larger group. Then even greater depth would come in the subsequent smaller classes.

Whatever form the educational component finally takes (this program should be used all over the nation after this pilot run), its effectiveness in drawing a diverse gathering of students into studying about a musical and social catalyst is quite evident.

This was clearly an educational endeavor worth repeating. It also should point the way toward discovering further didactic elements in subsequent NJSO festivals. Next year's "Northern Lights Festival" featuring Scandinavian composers could, for instance, try to get at the heart of what
causes patriotism, and what elements of it are effective and ineffective as national policy. What a teaching tool from such an unexpected source!

A sublime vista of partnership
The Newark Museum and NJSO effective together
Friday, January 23, 2004
By Paul M. Somers

. Tim Barringer (lecturer), Radoslav Kvapil (piano). "The Poetics of Nature: Dvorák and American Landscape Painting", a lecture with slideshow and music presented in conjunction with the Newark Museum with participation by Michael Beckerman, Joseph Horowitz, and Robert Winter. Dvorák: selections from American Suite.

The connection between Dvorák's artistic thinking and the American landscapes he encountered when he came here was the subject of a most revelatory presentation. It was in this event that much of what made the Dvorák Centenary Festival so important, even unique, took place. It was here that the partnership between the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and the Newark Museum was most evident, especially since this was sponsored by the latter. It was here that the Festival reached beyond music while including it as an integral part of the evening. Indeed, it was the cross-disciplinary nature of the experience which allowed everyone in the full audience to develop a heightened sensibility.

Tim Barringer, an art historian from Yale University and former fourth hornist with the Symphony of the New World, projected pairs of artworks, sometimes for comparison, sometimes to create an overwhelming effect of one type of subject. Plains, mountains, and waterfalls by Frederick Church, Albert Bierstadt, and many others filled the eye while Barringer's lucid lecture further illuminated the pictures. It was not all landscape, but sometimes the people - Native- and African-American - who populated it who were portrayed. The themes of sublime landscape, the romanticized "noble savage," and alienated blacks were pulled together in such a way that we came to perceive them all as part of the larger American inner portrait. (See excerpts from Henry Wyatt's article "The Sublime and Sublimity" on this page.)

Within this visual feast Czech pianist Radoslav Kvapil was asked at appropriate moments during the lecture to play three movements from Dvorák's American Suite, a work heard last season played by the NJSO in its later orchestral version, but actually unrecorded for piano! Kvapil's performances of this work, which he keeps in his repertoire, were free and expressive. One pianist present later exclaimed that if he played the piece the way Kvapil did - pushing and pulling tempo to that degree - the critics would eat him alive. And so they might, for the pianist set a standard of expression which, though unusual in our staid precision-dominated times, proved to be a dominant feature of the weekend's performances involving old country, old school interpreters Kvapil and conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski.

Between Barringer and Kvapil it was possible to come up with some answers to the ongoing questions of what makes music American and what made Dvorák's music in particular American when he was here? These twin questions lay at the heart of the Festival. Both art and music at times evoked the sublime vastness of the landscape; both used Indian themes in an elegiac manner, saying farewell to their noble ways without acknowledging the facts about them; and both acknowledged the presence of African-Americans as artistically benevolent influences, though especially in the paintings their outsider status was made clear.

There was a chance for audience questions after the presentation with not only Barringer and Kvapil on stage (Kvapil's English was very good), but Dvorák scholar Michael Beckerman, Festival host Joseph Horowitz, and educator and musician Robert Winter available. One listener spoke of the use of exaggeration in the paintings to emphasize the sublime elements. And this listener found the piano version of the American Suite, especially in the context of the visual depictions, to be a forward-looking work, whereas the later orchestral version seems to me to lock it in a time and place. The reason for the difference is that when played by piano the movements seem like piano miniatures in the descriptive tradition of, say, Schumann and Grieg. This took my mind forward to Dvorák's student Rubin Goldmark, who wrote piano miniatures on American subjects (Clipper Erickson has a recording of his Prairie Idylls). And the transmission of the American ethos is continued through Goldmark, as he was the piano teacher of both Aaron Copland and George Gershwin. When Edward Ellington came to New York from Washington, he was also pointed toward Goldmark for a few lessons. So three stalwarts of American music blossomed under the tutelage of a Dvorák student. And the direction was clearly shown with the American Suite as gnomon.

Both before and after the early evening presentation there were guided tours of the Newark Museum's excellent collection of American landscape painting. Many, in fact it seemed most, of the audience took the tour.

Fluid playing
Freedom by a Czech, style from America
Saturday, January 24, 2004
By Paul M. Somers

Dvorák Centenary. Interplay: Dvorák in America. Eric Wyrick (violin), Radoslav Kvapil (piano), with participation of Tim Barringer (art historian), Michael Beckerman (Dvorák scholar), Robert Winter (educator and Dvorák interactive DVD creator), and Joseph Horowitz (host). Billie Johnson Auditorium, Newark Museum, Newark.

That the Dvorák Festival was a two-way street was proved during a Saturday afternoon "Interplay" event. Czech pianist Radoslav Kvapil, who had grown up knowing the standard Czech story about the composer, told a full audience that after learning so much about Dvorák during the lectures and other events of the Festival, he was rethinking his approach to the music. "I never understood anything about the Indians' or the blacks' music and how it influenced Dvorák," he said, "and now I understand more and want to use it in playing."

Then there was another unexpected learning experience. After New Jersey Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Eric Wyrick played Dvorák's Sonatina in G major for violin and piano, op. 100, composed in America in 1893, he declared that Mr. Kvapil was one of the best musical partners he had ever had. One person, quite aware of Kvapil's fluid tempi, said "Really?" in an amazed tone. But Wyrick said that it was just that quality which freed him from metronomic constraints and allowed the two of them to create a performance of great immediacy. The music never sounded distorted or mannered, yet it had about it a sense that they were making it up as they went along - a true co-laboration. While the Sonatine is played on concert programs, in this performance it took on a stature I had never before heard.

When Mr. Kvapil returned to the stage to play the complete American Suite, he already seemed to be internalizing some of the elements he had absorbed during the Festival. The finale's idiosyncratic Native American evocation neatly conjured up Hiawatha instead of some generic dance. When it slipped into the proto-ragtime minstrelsy of the Kickapoo Medicine Show Dvorák witnessed in Spillville, Iowa, Kvapil had found the twang of a banjo and the less-studied syncopations which spawned jazz. I'm not sure he knew he was doing those things, for he is a very protean performer, but the Czech player was beginning to live into the American-isms of Dvorák.

Just those musical epiphanies were special to witness. But there was more.

Dvorák scholar Michael Beckerman had devised a Hiawatha *Melodrama using recorded snippets from the "New World" Symphony. As various portions of the music played (the sound system could use an upgrade, though that is not a likely priority for the Museum's fund raising initiatives), Beckerman read parts of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1850 epic The Song of Hiawatha which seemed to match up with the content of the music. Some of it was so tightly conceived that he was able to speak words with actual rhythms in the music.

Though he made sure he delivered a disclaimer about music meaning anything specific if it actually can mean anything (a philosophical point rendered moot by his subsequent performance), it was a more convincing a demonstration of the "Hiawatha-ness" of Dvorák's score than that which any library-based scholarship could ever produce.

The usual suspects (Kvapil, Tim Barringer, Beckerman, Robert Winter, and Joseph Horowitz) were joined by Wyrick on stage. Here they held forth on all kinds of Dvorák subjects with Horowitz as moderator, all the while passing one microphone around the group. This at least served to keep the discussion orderly and not like some musical McLaughlin Group. When they had exhausted themselves on the subjects, they announced that they would revive and resume the discussion early the next morning at New York University and we were all welcome to attend.

For me, not only was it in New York, but I knew that by the next morning I'd be Dvoráked out (see review of the subsequent concert led by Skrowaczewski), so the further commentary of the group went unreported by this writer.

A great American, if ever so briefly
Dvorák before and after America
Saturday, January 24, 2004
By Paul M. Somers

Dvorák Centenary: Inspiring America. New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (conductor), Tzimon Barto (piano). Dvorák: The Wood Dove, op. 110 (1896); Piano Concerto, op. 33 (1876); Symphony no. 9 in E minor, op. 95 ("From the New World", 1893). Heard at

The climactic event of the Dvorák Festival was, needless to say, the performance of his Symphony no. 9, "From the New World." It was the final work of the Festival. We had been doing nothing but examine the various ideas and music surrounding Dvorák's years in America, but now we were coming in from the periphery and centering on the fulcrum, the very heart of the Festival.

As if to mark the very centrality of that work, the concert began with The Wood Dove, op. 110, a work dating from Dvorák's post-American years. In that period the composer threw off the classical yoke and composed *tone poems on Czech tales told in poetry by Karel Jaromir Erben. If The Water Sprite (reviewed in the last issue of CNJSJ) is CSI meets the Twilight Zone, then this one is a psychological thriller with a dark, suicidal ending.

Premiered with Leos Janácek on the podium, the piece has the tortured chromaticism often found in works of the period, at times treading near the ground of, say, Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht. The opening dirge, which also ends the piece, must have resonated with Gustav Mahler, who led the second performance. When the tale calls for bird calls, these are far from the imitations of American birds said to exist in the American Quartet. These calls presage the eerie cries heard at crucial moments in Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten, a work with a story equally bizarre in its symbolism.

Conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, kept the piece mysterious and brooding without falling into a modernist's parody of the genre. Garth Greenup's trumpet solos were first rate. The detailed story-telling proved to be a foreshadowing of next season's look at Sibelius, whose tone poems delve into Finland's Kalevala.

After that look at music on one side of the "New World" balance point, out came Tzimon Barto to play Dvorák's lone Piano Concerto in G minor. Composed in 1876, years before his American sojourn, it even predates his best-known symphonies.

Barto's performance, played with the piano score on the music rack, was everything the piece deserves - technique, phrasing, panache, and even glitter. He seemed sympathetic to Dvorák's original version. Another exists, manufactured by a pianist dissatisfied with the original, filled with splashier bravura turns but sounding even less like Dvorák. Yet it must be noted that this is not a piece Barto sees as a marketable commodity for his career or he would have memorized it. His judgement is sound. This is Dvorák treading in waters he did not care to tread: the classical Germanic tradition. We have a work which sounds as if it is modeled on something earlier: here a dash of Beethoven's "Emperor", there some glittering Hummel *passage work, and everywhere a young man wanting to please the supportive foreigners with whom he has provisionally cast his lot. Yet even those homage moments are awkward, not exactly what a Bohemian violist felt comfortable writing. All we can do from our long view backward is sigh and wait for him to compose his chamber music for piano or his more "from the heart" works in which the piano is a tool for his own expression, not for imitating someone else's. I'm glad to have heard the piece, but I am content to put it back on the shelf in favor of the fully formed Slavonic Dances, the masterful Violin Concerto of only four years later, and all his subsequent works. If there is anything still-too-often-ignored from his pre-American period which I would like to rescue, it is his delicious Symphony no. 6.

What Radoslav Kvapil had done for the American Suite at the piano (speaking of effective piano music), Skrowaczewski did for the Symphony "From the New World". Never have I heard a performance with such extremes of tempo, so much push and pull. And never have I heard a performance which kept me so engaged in its drama. It was not a matter of wondering what the conductor would do next - an excitement based on the wrong aspects of the performance. This was one in which the conductor came on stage with a completely formed idea, as subjective as possible, and convinced us at every moment that he was speaking accurately for Dvorák.

Modern purists may complain if they wish, but any close listening to early recordings, even as late as Elgar conducting his own works, will show that Skrowaczewski was far more authentic than less adventurous (and thus less expressive) "only what the score says" modernists.

Andrew Adelson's playing of the famous english horn solo was right on the expressive mark. Both Bart Feller's and Kathleen Nester's flute solos showed them to be a well-matched pair. Even little details - like just the right balance for the triangle - were in place.

Those of us who had heard Michael Beckerman's Hiawatha Melodrama in the afternoon could not help but hear the "Dance of Pau-Puk-Keewis", nor could we miss the poignant "Death of Minnehaha". But those of us who knew that Dvorák was a devoted railfan also heard in the finale the sound of a steam engine starting up and its wild ride across the American landscapes he had not yet seen.

All the kids who had participated in the educational outreach were present for this performance, thus giving them a chance not only to hear the orchestra and the piece about which they had learned so much, but to actually see the players on stage who had come to play for them in school. It was the perfect conclusion to the best NJSO winter festival yet.

Busy pianist
Soaring cellist
Sunday, January 31, 2004
By Paul M. Somers

Jersey Chamber Symphony.  Music for Piano and Cello: David Pasbrig (piano), Vivian Barton (cello).  Ravel: Le tombeau de Couperin; Debussy: L’isle joyeuse; Fauré: Romance; Rachmaninoff: Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 19.  First Presbyterian Church, Moorestown.

Pianist David Pasbrig showed off his considerable technique in a concert which also featured cellist Vivian Barton in the second half.  Indeed, it was his playing of the intimidating piano part of the Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata which brought the audience to its feet at the conclusion of the evening.  With all due respect to Ms. Barton, the composer was far more interested in lyric long lines for her, not in a technical showpiece.  That is the pianist’s province.  And play it Pasbrig did!  Some complained that he should have had the piano at *half-stick, but this is not music to be driven at half-throttle.

            When Barton had her most challenging moment, the rising figure in the *coda, she allowed us to hear her great ability.  Of course those who have heard her as the Chamber Symphony’s principal cellist didn’t need convincing.  But this evening was for her to demonstrate her artistry with well-conceived phrasing and gorgeous sound.  She proved to be so sure of herself that she didn’t need great technical display to validate her playing.

            Neither did Pasbrig need it, but he chose a program which demanded it.  When he spoke to the audience before playing Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin he said he was going to leave out the fugue because it is “academic and dry.”  Someone nearby muttered, “Maybe he can’t play it.”  But from the moment he began it was apparent that he would have had no problems with anything Ravel set before him.  In the *”Forlane” and *”Rigaudon” he caught the dance aspect, playing with a lightness of touch which remained pianistic with no hint of knowing that Ravel orchestrated the pieces.  Yet in the “Minuet” he emphasized the pastoral feel more than the dance.  The final *”Toccata” was the tour de force it was intended to be with great pacing.

            The same long-view pacing was the greatest virtue of Debussy’s L’isle joyeuse.  Of course all the technical display was in place, but it was clear that Pasbrig had a goal and he let us know when he achieved it.

            The essential intimacy of the church gave the performance an immediacy not achievable in a large hall.  The audience was most appreciative, and the intermission was filled with conversation about the music instead of the weather or what-not.

            Just the way a concert should be.  All smiles.