Financial Times / February 18, 2002
The Arts / New York / Music
AMAZING GRACE
By Martin Bernheimer
New York, according to sublimely delusional New Yorkers, is the center
of America's cultural universe. Maybe the world's. Everything else
is just "out-of-town." But, as the great tenorino Vito Sportivo
enjoyed reminding all and sundry (especially sundry), it ain't
necessarily so.
It certainly ain't so when it comes to orchestral adventure. The
stodgy New York Philharmonic is all but stagnating under the lame-duck
leadership of its Old World maestro, Kurt Masur, and the immediate
future under Lorin Maazel looms ominous. Meanwhile, a couple of
symphonic mavericks are making interesting music, their way, in the
not-so-wild west. Esa-Pekka Salonen has inaugurated a new aura, and
era, of vitality with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. A bit farther
north, Michael Tilson Thomas has managed to rejuvenate the San
Francisco Symphony.
Wednesday night, joining an endless parade of orchestral invaders,
it was Thomas' turn to show his wares at Carnegie Hall. He did so
with exceptional flair, which was expected, and with a fine degree
of drama, which wasn't.
The programme, cautious by this conductor's standards, examined two
sides of a Germanic romanticism in decay. The first half exposed
the lean expressive agonies of Arnold Schoenberg. The second explored
the lush ecstasies of Gustav Mahler.
As a sardonic overture of sorts, Thomas chose Schoenberg's "Theme
and Variations" of 1943, a surprisingly jaunty, almost hummable,
astonishingly compact collection of essays in orchestral convolution.
The maestro toyed knowingly with the creative contradictions, kept
the momentum brisk and the textures clean. The San Franciscans
responded to his measured urgings with the sort of virtuosity that
insists on seeming casual.
In Schoenberg's "Five Pieces for Orchestra," which followed, Thomas
managed to untie the progressive linear knots and clarify the harmonic
haze as if he were dealing with five easy pieces. For all the dark
undertones, it all sounded elegant, even graceful. So much for the
abstraction and Angst of 1909.
"Das Lied von der Erde," which followed the interval, was completed
the same year, and Thomas no doubt savored the statistical irony.
In surveying Mahler's rapturous Weltschmerz, he enforced the same
degrees of orchestral discipline, respected the same demands for
transparency and propulsion. But he took enlightened liberties
here---opting for broad tempos and generous fluctuations within them,
daring to linger over subtle details, luxuriating in the harmonic
opulence. Most important, he managed to sustain tension over the
long haul, without blurring the elusive line that separates bathos
from pathos.
He found a most sympathetic ally in Thomas Hampson, who sang the
lower solos with bel-canto warmth, rapt concentration, characteristic
introspection and dynamic sensitivity. The final "Abschied" took
the audience's breath away, if not the baritone's. Less successful,
unfortunately, was Michael Schade, latest in a long line of good
lyric tenors fazed by Mahler's unreasonable demands for poetry,
flexibility and power at both range extremes.
Janos Gereben/SF
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