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University Centre Auditorium
October 29, 2010
To anyone who still believes that the conductor's sole function is to beat time to keep the orchestra together, I commend the following anecdote, related by Wolfgang Stresemann, quondam Intendant of the Berlin Philharmonic.
One day Stresemann was listening to a rehearsal under a guest conductor, when he suddenly noticed the sound of the orchestra change completely. Mystified, he turned around and noticed what the orchestra was already aware of: Principal Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler had just entered the hall.
Ajtony Csaba has clearly already set his stamp upon the UVic Orchestra - and not merely by entering from the right hand side of the stage, the first time I ever recall seeing this in the better part of two decades attending concerts in the Farquhar Auditorium, or by his reseating of the musicians themselves, with the brass no longer seated on risers behind the woodwind, but on a level with the strings.
Most of all, though, it was the very sound of the orchestra which was altered; and while the seating may have had some affect, as indeed may the regular, annual injection of new blood into the orchestra, neither I nor others I spoke to at the interval believed the true cause to be anything other than the orchestra's new conductor.
And what are these changes? Certainly I would not make too much of them - the violins still sound like violins, for example - they are noticeable and the chief amongst them is a leaner, lither aspect to the overall sound.
It is, I suspect, a thoroughly modern sound.
As to Friday's music itself, it was a mixed programme, presented in an unusual order (when can you last recall the final item at a concert being the overture?) which, I suspect, presented auguries of what we can expect from Csaba in the future.
One thing that we can clearly not expect is anything approaching no-holds-barred hell-for-leather readings of Romantic works, not if the opening performance of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet was any indication.
Although Csaba's feelings are clearly not quite as extreme as that other baton-eschewing conductor, Pierre Boulez - "I hate Tchaikovsky and I will not conduct him" - this was, for me, a performance which was never quite willing to let itself go; the musical equivalent, perhaps, of Thomas Bowdler, who felt of Romeo and Juliet that "His comick scenes are happily wrought, but his pathetick strains are always polluted with some unexpected depravations".
There is no doubt that the music was very well played - from the beautifully sombre winds at the opening (unhappily less well tuned on its reprise), to the blazing, yet never harsh, trumpets at the climax - yet, for me, there was never any real feeling of danger; "star-cross'd lovers" Romeo and Juliet may well have been, sensible and restrained adults they most certainly were not.
By contrast, Csaba was clearly completely at home with the next work on the programme, Witold Lutoslawski's Jeux Venitiens.
Considering that this modern classic is almost half a century old, I am left wondering how it is that I had never, to my certain knowledge, even heard a recording before Friday's excellent performance.
Although none of the more obvious aspects of the music were exactly new even in 1960 - spatially-separated instrumental grouping arguably goes back to Gabrieli and had been enthusiastically adopted by Stockhausen in the 1950s, as indeed had elements of "chance" - Lutoslawski puts his own stamp on them, especially by having the conductor (more like a traffic cop in some ways) make the decisions as to "when and how long"; previous examples had either involved a single performer, such as Stockhausen's Klavierstuck XI, or a more anarchic free-for-all, like Cage's Atlas Eclipticalis which provoked a riot when Leonard Bernstein performed in with the New York Philharmonic in 1958. (In case you were wondering, it was the musicians themselves, rather then the audience, who rioted.)
Music this recent has been something of a rarity at UVic Orchestra concerts and so it was gratifying to observe that not only were the players themselves clearly revelling in the piece but the audience themselves, if their response was any indication, also enjoyed it greatly.
In the second half of the concert we heard music exclusively from the eighteenth century: Haydn's Symphony No.104 and the overture to Mozart's The Magic Flute.
As I had begun to suspect during the first half, both of these works received rather more convincing performances than the Tchaikovsky, even though the Haydn was occasionally disfigured with some exaggeratedly slow tempos. Nevertheless, stylistically the performance was definitely on the same page as its composer and the lean-and-mean orchestral textures would doubtless gladden the hearts of those who believe "big band" Haydn to be anathema.
Suspicions that Csaba must have had a reason for leaving the Mozart overture until last were confirmed as soon as the music began: those sombre, sonorous "Masonic" opening trombone chords were magnificent and the subsequent fugal allegro (based on a theme from a piano sonata by Clementi, a composer Mozart claimed to consider a "charlatan") took off like a rocket.
Coincidentally, a day or so later I heard a performance of the overture (by the Calgary Philharmonic, although the "dumbed-down" CBC apparently no longer feels it necessary to inform us who was conducting). While that was in no wise a slow performance, this one left it standing, yet the playing was every bit as good and ensemble, even at such a tempo, was all but immaculate.
I have probably made it clear that, interpretively, I did not agree with everything Csaba did, but one point I must underline: his skills as an orchestral trainer are in no doubt; this was most distinguished playing.
A promising start to the new era at UVic.
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