From the yawningly empty seats tonight at the Kennedy Center, it was clear that something was keeping them away. Pre-election fever? Check. A violin concerto, premiered last year, by a contemporary American jazz composer. Probably also, check, alas. It was their loss. Those who came were rewarded by a rousing performance, given by Nicola Benedetti, of Wynton Marsalis’ Concerto in D. It is no meanly conceived work, boasting four movements and lasting 40 minutes, and this was an opportunity to hear the concerto played by the very person for whom it was intended. Marsalis and Benedetti have teamed up as a creative force, both passionate promoters of social advocacy through music. And you could feel some of that here – there’s a desire for relevance, a desire not to stay within the standard idiom of classicism, a desire to mix things up. Salad bowl or melting pot, that was the old question about what mode of unity was more desirable for collective American identity. This Concerto is a bit of both, a bit of everything indeed, all elements are thrown into the stew, for good measure, but certain strands remain distinctly identifiable particularly those referencing jazz, spirituals and big band.
Marsalis’ instrumentation helps here – in particular his over-the-top percussion section: we have African drums, a broom, claves, cow bells, a variety of cymbals ( including crash, ride, sizzle and splash), clappers, high hat, a marimba, even (stridently and pointedly) a police whistle. These present a cornucopia of interesting effects, the conventional mixed in with the unconventional. To read Marsalis’ own prolix descriptions of its movements is to realize that he intends it to be a litany of emotions, that his impulse is not merely to root the work in historic American community, but also to universalize its meaning. Although the pile-up of adjectives might have come across as a touch naïve (‘wistfulness, loss, cleansing grief, ascendance, transcendence, and acceptance’ to describe one, ‘raucous, stomping, mirthful, dancing, wistful, playful, parading’ for another), there is nothing like letting the music speak for itself, and it did so speak, very loudly at times. Benedetti came at it with great panache and full force; its demands are strenuous on the soloist, not least in making herself heard; the orchestra did their part with gusto. There were moving moments in the third movement, Blues, which developed into an African-American style church service, call-and-response, and ended with an extraordinary collective sigh. To be frank, this sounded more like the cry of a people and as such could not fail to have poignant effect; it was followed fittingly by a sensitively drawn-out decrescendo into silence.