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NJPAC + NJSO = SRO
Why sitting at home doesn’t cut it
Saturday, October 21, 2006
By Paul M. Somers

New Jersey Performing Arts Center presented the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Järvi (cond.), Yo-Yo Ma (cello). Chabrier: Fête polonaise; Fauré: Elégie; Rimsky-Korsakov: Capriccio espagnol; Dvorák: Cello Concerto. Prudential Hall, NJPAC, Newark.

By the time the audience’s hands got tired from applauding, the evening had been labeled a grand success by all concerned on both sides of the proscenium arch. Certainly the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, which presented the concert, was thrilled with a standing room only house.

So what was the act which had the place going wild? The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra with Neeme Järvi and guest cellist Yo-Yo Ma. With that combination on tap it was not a concert for the stodgy or faint-hearted. Musicality jumped off the stage at every turn. At a purely artistic level, this was a concert filled with first-rate music-making, just the kind of thing which would suit the audibly “Boston Brahmin” type of person who sat behind me.

But of course live music does not exist in that sort of purist ambiance. These are performers who enjoy the experience, and were not shy about having fun with the audience and themselves. Ma and Järvi “Alphonse-Gaston”-ed themselves on to the stage — a few iterations of motioning “You first,” “No you first,” all the while the audience and orchestra applauding.

The subsequent performance of the Dvorák Cello Concerto was absolutely top-of-the-line. The entrance silliness had siphoned off all their excess exuberance, and now conductor and players set to engaging themselves and the audience at the deepest level with one of Dvorák’s most significant scores. While it is never safe to take a performer for granted, Ma was expected to be great, so it was no surprise that he fulfilled every expectation. Every phrase had direction and intensely distinctive expressive content. The slow movement was filled with the ravishing sound and emotion for which Ma is renowned. The final wistful — even ethereal — phrases of the finale were deeply touching. Ma and Järvi often visibly breathed as one.

Among the orchestral soloists, flutist Bart Feller stood out with his many passages where he was an equal chamber music partner with Ma. The four horns, too, created many warmly burnished high points.

At the conclusion of the brilliant first movement, the audience burst into applause. The Boston Brahmin muttered disgustedly, “New Jersey,” forgetting, if he ever knew, the extreme disappointment Dvorák and Leo Sternm the original cellist, would have felt had their efforts been greeted with silence after each movement.

This business of not applauding between movements is relatively new; even in the late 1940s Olin Downes complained in a review about the new fad of not applauding. So, as far as this listener is concerned, NJSO audiences (and those of other New Jersey groups as well) are part of a wave of “back to the future” listeners. Good for them.

The concert opened with Emanuel Chabrier’s “Fête polonaise” from Le roi malgré lui. Especially in the *coda there were a few harmonic surprises. Järvi produced a far more neurotic vision in this work than he gave last season to Ravel’s La valse. The precision which now exists side by side with the string sheen made for an exciting opening for the entire season.

There was, of course, applause after the unfamiliar concert-opening piece. But it was dying even before Järvi was all the way off stage, so he just circled around the back of the first violins and returned to the front. The audience laughed and, of course, began to applaud again. It was pure Järvi, and it got the audience into a responsive way of reacting. The Brahmin said indignantly, “They’d never put up with that in Boston.” Sad. It must be part of the Puritan ethic.

Fauré’s Elégie for cello and orchestra brought Ma to the stage in the first half of the concert, rather as a teaser or appetizer. The work is very lyrical and could be ascribed to no other composer than the gentle Fauré.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s flashy Capriccio espagnol, a favorite of amateur community orchestras, was trotted out for a run with the pros. All those flashy solo parts were now heard a lot closer to their Platonic ideal than the distorted shadows on the wall so often produced by the amateurs.

Järvi needed no hi-jinks to urge the audience to applaud after Rimsky. And certainly no urging was needed after the final *fortissimo pages of the Dvorák Concerto.

Heaven only knows what the Brahmin thought about the goings on with Ma and Järvi when the program was concluded. There was too much clapping and cheering to hear his mutterings, if such there were. The two artists embraced, then went around shaking hands with player after player. When they returned, they had their arms around each other’s shoulders. Ma pointed at flutist Feller, and Järvi motioned for him to stand; and thus it went, Ma suggesting player after player and Järvi making it so.

Next they came out and played an encore: Artur Kapp’s Prelude for Cello and Orchestra. Kapp (1878-1952) is an Estonian composer who studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. The very attractive piece was played so lovingly by Ma that he really should use it regularly as an encore.

Then the applause went on and on and on as the Ma and Järvi show continued. At one point Järvi came on alone, clapping for Ma rhythmically in the European fashion. Ma came on without his cello so he, too, could clap rhythmically. Then, still clapping, he motioned to the orchestra so everyone would know for whom he was applauding. This, of course generated even louder applause. From the end of the Dvorák until the hall began to empty took half an hour.

The Brahmin behind me may have grumped periodically, but I could not help but notice that he stayed for every second of the encore and ovations. Perhaps there’s hope for him after all.

(And between you and me, I think Boston really would love it.)

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