~ Author: Oberon
Friday August 2nd, 2024 - Carnegie Hall presenting WOW! (World Orchestra Week) featuring visiting youth orchestras from around the globe. This evening, Gustavo Dudamel (photo above) took the podium to lead the National Children's Symphony of Venezuela in a varied and demanding program.
Carnegie Hall was packed to the rafters; young musicians from the other youth orchestras to be featured in the week-long festival took up large swathes of seats, and throughout the evening they were very vocal in their support of the Venezuelans, who filled the Carnegie stage to overflowing: I think I counted a dozen basses, and large contingents of winds and brass, to say nothing of a veritable army of violins.
John Adams' Short Ride in a Fast Machine was the perfect opener for this program: lasting less than 5 minutes, the piece commences with a crazy, insistent beat and gets faster as it progresses. Piercing flutes and summoning trumpets decorate this tumultuous and fun score.
As an ideal contrast, we then heard from composer Antonio Estévez: his Mediodía en el llano is simply gorgeous. A chord builds slowly, like light emerging from behind dark clouds. Simmering violins lead to a horn quartet, and then delicate tremolos are heard. The tempo becomes more expansive, with a broad melody leading to a lovely violin solo.
Unannounced, we now had a choral interlude; white clad young singers took the stage; Maestro Dudamel spoke briefly but inaudibly about the two pieces that would be sung: two madrigals, the second being a setting of the Gloria. The voices blended sweetly; perhaps in the coming days the Carnegie website will give details about the works.
Alberto Ginastera's Four Dances from Estancia, is drawn from a complete ballet score commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein for American Ballet Caravan. When the premiere was postponed due to the disbanding of the company, the composer extracted a suite of dances. It wasn't until 2010 that the New York City Ballet presented Christopher Wheeldon's setting of the music as part of the Calatrava Festival.
Estancia ("living room" or - in this case - "wide open spaces") opens with energetic accents; the percussionists have a lot of fun here. Next comes a slow dance, with a featured flute solo and the horns developing a big melody. A passage for piano and soft violins is especially pleasing. The third dance is big and stirring, with some crazy drumming, and, after a squeaky start, a lilting beat springs up and the percussionists are again fully engaged. Then all the musicians began to sway.
After a long intermission, there was a ceremony in which Maestro Dudamel was awarded the Glenn Gould Prize; this went on a bit longer than necessary as my companion and I waited (im)patiently for the evening's crowning glory: the Shostakovich 5th symphony.
At the time of the symphony's premiere, the composer was in deep trouble with Stalin and his Soviet government. His symphony thus took the form of a penance for having stirred up the dictator's displeasure with his daring opera, LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK. The result of Shostakovich's desire to please the authorities was a titanic symphonic masterpiece.
Maestro Dudamel and his young players gave this astounding music a performance that was thrilling from start to finishm if not always perfectly polished. Commencing with solo clarinet and moving on to a passage with piano and deep brass, the opening Moderato becomes extremely noisy..and then subsides. The pairing of flute and horn is a stroke of genius, with the clarinet and high violin picking up the melodic thread. The misterioso flute casts a spell of its own.
In the Allegretto, solo winds pop up before Shostakovich commences a waltz. Irony and wit hover overall, with featured passages for a procession of instruments: violin, flute, trumpet, a bassoon duo. Plucking strings introduce a fresh texture.
The mournful opening of the Largo dispels any thoughts of lightness that the Allegretto might have stirred up. In this third movement, the brass do not play at all. Weeping strings, and the mingling of harp and flute lead to a rising sense of passion coloured by desolation. This evolves into a theme for oboe and violins. A lonely clarinet and a forlorn flute speak to us before a grand build-up commences with the strings in unison really digging into it. The music wafts into a high haze of despin support of heir colleagues instage. air, the harp trying to console.
Sadly, during this spell-binding Largo, there was a series of intrusive noises which were so frequent as to be comical: several audience members dropped items - always at the very worst moments of the music - and a cellphone and whimpering child added to the distractions.
The fourth movement, with its epic feeling of propulsive grandeur, is thought to have marked Shostakovich's triumph over the woes besetting him; but it has also been described as “forced rejoicing”. Whichever may be the case, a glorious horn theme, the aching strings, and the slow build-up to the epic finish certainly raised our spirits tonight. The cymbalist's exuberant clashes at the end took on a celebratory feel.
There followed a tumultuous standing ovation, the young musicians in the audience screaming with deafening intensity as their Venezuelan colleagues onstage bowed, section by section. A sort of endless encore seemed poorly organized, but was played with great enthusiasm. At the evening's end, the players hoisted their instruments over their heads as Carnegie Hall literally rocked.
UPDATE: the two 'unannounced' madrigals were by Jose Antonio Abreu: "Sol que das vida a los trigos" and "Gloria".
The encores were by Romero (Fuga con pajarillo) and Leonard Bernstein ("Mambo" from West Side Story).
~ Oberon