Dallas Symphony: Nielsen 5

Saturday, April 6, 2019

Dallas Symphony Orchestra
John Storgårds - conductor
Augustin Hadelich - violin

Haydn - Symphony No. 94 "Surprise"
Sibelius - Violin Concerto
Nielsen - Symphony No. 5

Full disclosure: every single time I've ever listened to Haydn 94 in my entire life I've fallen asleep only to be woken up by the timpani in the second movement. How dare you read me like that, Papa Haydn. I'll blame the fact that I had to speedwalk to the concert hall as to not be late for not falling asleep this time. It's a good thing I didn't fall asleep because this was the best part of the program. Storgårds conducted without a baton which indicated to me several levels of intimacy - between him and the musicians, between him and the music itself, and between him and the audience (or at least anyone who noticed a lack of baton). I found his conducting to be comforting and only displaying the intimacy required for Haydn, no more. He didn't micromanage, didn't try to make Haydn more than what he is, and this created a sort of equilibrium throughout the orchestra. The entire symphony had cohesion because dots were connected but I wasn't convinced anyone was aware of the larger picture. Classical-period music almost always has a vertical grace and a long horizontal lyricism - like a marionette of a ballerina en pointe. She's suspended from above, immune to gravity, and her movements can be as long as the puppeteer can move. Performances often lack one of those two qualities, in this case, it was the horizontal lyricism. At some point of preparation, keeping time in each beat is less important than macro-rhythm or making each section of the movement sound like a complete gesture. The performance garnered brief applause from me but definitely not the three bows the audience demanded with an instant standing ovation.

From the soloist's first note of the Sibelius I knew that we weren't going to be in for any sort of transformative experience tonight. Hadelich put the right notes in the right place at the right time but that was really about it. There were a few things that bothered me throughout the concerto. One was what I identified during the first note, that the soloist didn't seem to have any idea of timbral color and that it can be changed. This goes beyond vibrato and bow technique, beyond the resonance of the instrument. His body didn't resonate along with the violin. I could hear his sound hitting the back wall but it lacked depth and sincerity. The Sibelius to me is a stoically detached caricature of human emotion. It sprouted from some kind of genuine emotion and was then almost operatically exaggerated. This is why it works paired well with Haydn - for the different ways in which music can be emotionally detached. In fact, the second movement of the Sibelius could be played with the same grace as one would play Classical-period music. Between that and Sibelius's orchestrational moments where it sounds like hooking both hands into your sternum to wrench it apart, revealing rays of perfect golden light, this concerto could have been the perfect catalyst between the Haydn and the Neilsen. There was something disingenuous about the the entirety of the Sibelius, the second movement in particular. Maybe they were trying to make it something more than it was, a false gravitas. The concerto left me with nothing more than mild resentment.

Just when I thought the applause was waning, not only did the soloist come out for a third bow but then proceeded to play an encore (the audacity) of Paganini Caprice No. 24. Choices. I was so profoundly unimpressed I found myself losing respect for him on a basic human level. This wasn't necessary. This wasn't good. No one here needed this experience. From where I was seated I couldn't see the soloist during the concerto because he was blocked by the conductor but I could for the encore. The showboating! The grandstanding! The pained expression of the concertmaster who looked like he would prefer to not be present! I couldn't help myself. When the standing applause exploded at the end (predictably), I couldn't help but throw my head back in exasperation. Am I really asking so much for anyone else in the audience to be critical of what they're hearing? To entertain for a moment that perhaps this was not the best thing they've ever heard?

Nielsen's wind writing is like an old friend, one you always want to see simply because you enjoy your time together even if you're doing nothing. Like Sibelius and Haydn, I don't think Nielsen 5 should be more than it is. Much of that symphony is just effortless beauty. Nielsen is honest, musically honest and that has a certain simplicity that I appreciate. I didn't go into this concert too terribly familiar with Nielsen's symphonic writing. You can check out the wiki page for the symphony if you want historical context but to me the second movement just sounds like confusion (which is completely valid given world events at the time). It sounds like Nielsen likely had a great deal of internal struggle about emotional authenticity in music, translating experiences and thoughts to music on paper. The slow fugue near the end just wanders aimlessly until the winds enter; the winds are always Nielsen's sense of order and reason, when things seem to make sense to him again. Confusion is a valid emotion but maybe there's a little quiet existentialism? The symphony ended and I didn't quite know why we were there, like Nielsen couldn't adequately express exactly what he wanted, something that maybe could be expressed in a single glance and a sigh.

I don't think anyone should go to the symphony, or into any experience, really, and expect it to be the best thing they've ever experienced. As musicians, we should be similarly realistic in how we approach performances. Just because a piece is not profound or life-altering doesn't mean it has no value or doesn't deserve respect. Do we have a responsibility to portray this music accurately? Absolutely. We would be remiss if we only conveyed the outermost points of the emotional spectrum in our art because so much of life exists in the in-between. Sometimes music doesn't need to be about more than how a composer can smoothly blend the winds into a string texture like a gentle gradient of two colors maybe only five shades apart. Art that explores the emotional in-between is possibly more important, urging us to broaden our emotional range, to be truly attune to what we are feeling, even if what we feel seems unremarkable. Much of life is unremarkable. That does not make it any less worth living.