This concert by the Baltimore Symphony under guest conductor David Danzmayr featured one of the more intriguing programs of the BSO's 2023-24 season. Following a short Elegy by John Williams, performed in response to the outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East, the official program opened with This Midnight Hour, British composer Anna Clyne’s 2015 imaginative tone picture inspired by the poetry of Baudelaire and Jiménez. It's replete with pulse-quickening musical material that threatens to chase the listener down, but the piece also includes several life-affirming melodies that serve as an antidote to the angst-ridden atmospherics.
Danzmayr and the BSO players delivered an emotion-packed performance. As one particularly interesting aspect of the score, what might at first seem like poor string intonation turned out to be intentionally written that way to suggest the sound of an accordion. Woodwind playing was superb and trumpets, positioned on either side of the stage, played an important part in the closing bars.
Contemporary music continued in the next piece, but from 60 years earlier: Samuel Barber’s Andromache’s Farewell. Drawn from Euripides’ play The Trojan Women, this work could have been tailor-made for today’s soloist, soprano Christine Goerke, who is currently artist-in-residence at the BSO. Goerke has a big voice that’s well-suited to Wagnerian and Straussian roles, but is also effective in mid-century American compositions such as this Barber selection (composed in 1962 for the inaugural season of the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center) as well as contemporaneous works like Vittorio Giannini’s The Medead. The subject matter is grim, centering on the imprisonment of Andromache and the killing of her son Astyanax who is thrown from the city’s ramparts.
Barber’s score is über-dramatic, with challenging vocal lines that Goerke delivered with complete authority. The BSO’s performance came across like true operatic tragedy, shattering in its effect. Goerke delivered the goods, singing as if the score was her own personal property. Moreover, her dramatic presence on the stage – dressed in all-black while conveying a range of visual emotions aligned with the text – added to the overall effect. As an encore, Goerke delivered more mid-century American fare in the form of the aria “To this we’ve come” from Gian Carlo Menotti’s 1950 opera The Consul. Here again, precision vocal artistry accompanied by convincing dramatic gestures proved to be a winning combination.
Following the intermission, Danzmayr and the Baltimore players presented Sibelius’ Symphony no. 1 in E minor. This symphony has been aptly described as music that’s “wound tight, always on the verge of exploding”. In his interpretation, Danzmayr delivered plenty of emotion interspersed with contemplative moments of true rapture. The opening clarinet solo was spellbinding, although I was startled by the brilliant dynamic level of the strings’ entrance; interpretively, it was something of a misfire. But the remainder of the first movement was storytelling at its best, keeping us on the edge of our seats.
The Andante was a study in contrasts, with Danzmayr coaxing every ounce of romantic feeling from the opening theme played by muted strings, followed by a development section building to a fierce climax, then dropping back to hushed tones to conclude the movement. Danzmayr’s Scherzo was remindful of Stokowski’s near-manic way with this music, while the final movement delivered towering blocks of sound, as if the conductor was channeling Sibelius biographer Karl Ekman’s description of this symphony as “the composer stepping forth unmasked before the world – his own ego confessed in sound.” It was perhaps unsurprising, considering that the conductor studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.
