Saturday, November 1, 2024
Orchestra Hall, Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center, Woodward Avenue, Detroit, Michigan
From the above banner, and similar publicity, you’d never have guessed that this concert included a major – and popular – work by Schoenberg. A cynic may wonder if the DSO was consciously suppressing Schoenberg’s name, which has been described as “box-office poison”. Hopefully not.
Following a stylish and detailed account of the Figaro Overture – left to the last minute by Mozart (it seems) and without thematic reference to the opera that follows – its joie de vivre admirably conveyed by the DSO and Tabita Berglund, came Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (1899/1943; string sextet/string orchestra) to the poem by Richard Dehmel (English version linked to below). It was an eloquent, well-paced performance, if with one problem … not enough strings – from ten first violins to four basses – which proved somewhat thin and less than powerful, not that this music always has to sound like Karajan’s voluptuous and commanding DG/Berlin recording. Aside from this numerical misjudgement, the baton-less Berglund moulded a compelling account, with a largesse that took this starlit, tense and romantic piece to thirty-two flexible minutes, ebbing and flowing, beautifully played, fully attuned to the score’s expressions and emotions.
After listening to many performances of this piece, in this orchestral version, I wondered for the first time if Verklärte Nacht had influenced Bernard Herrmann when he was composing his score (also for strings) for Hitchcock’s Psycho; the movie came to mind several times.
Following the interval, a magnificent reading of Brahms’s D-minor Piano Concerto, Kirill Gerstein in patrician form, Berglund and the DSO offering full support as well as distinctions of their own (for the third time this week), opening my joint-first Desert Island Piano Concerto, the other being Beethoven’s Fourth, incisively and tempestuously, Gerstein heroic in his technical response to the solo demands, parading a gamut of touch and responses. The slow movement was especially deeply soulful, and the Finale athletic and cumulative, the coda triumphant in spirit and musical observances, such as highlighting and clarifying the timpani writing. Gerstein took his share of applause modestly, invariably standing aside in favour of conductor and orchestra, if also never looking like someone about to play more, this symphonic Concerto being enough for a night’s work.
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Overture to Le nozze di Figaro
ARNOLD SCHOENBERG Verklärte Nacht
JOHANNES BRAHMS Piano Concerto No.1
https://allpoetry.com/poem/8506953-Transfigured-Night–Verkl-rte-Nacht–by-Richard-Dehmel