Every time you go to a concert, it’s with the hope that for at least some of it, the conductor, the program and the artists will fuse into something that transcends them all, something that lifts you out of yourself. Last night, the combination of Joana Carneiro, the Summer for the City Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center and music by Gabriela Lena Frank, Shostakovich, Ravel and Prokofiev created that fusion more often than not.
Frank’s Elegia Andina has pyramids of instrumental color, moaning and groaning blocks of string sound, and ferocious, gestural momentum with a debt to The Rite of Spring – all of which is stopped cold two thirds of the way through by a duet for two flutes which forms the heart of the work. The impression I formed was not of an elegy, but of hurtling through a rich and varied landscape with not enough time to take in the surrounding wonders. After the flute duet, however, the piece slows down and breathes, as though a sudden shock had made the traveler newly aware. There was a palpable sense of a journey taken, a spirit changed.
Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony, Op. 83a is actually an orchestration by Rudolf Barshoi of the composer’s Fourth String Quartet, a subdued but highly expressive piece from a turbulent time in Shostakovich’s life. The quartet seems to be striving for variety of texture and color and it thrives in this orchestral version. Carneiro’s control of tension and release was nothing short of miraculous. The woodwind soloists, on whose shoulders much of the piece’s flowing melancholy falls, were consistently individual and expressive. The strings rendered menacingly gnarly counterpoint and muted cries of anguish with equally arresting conviction. I cannot say enough about Carneiro’s attention to the underlying narrative. I was convinced at one point that I was hearing a sonic rendition of lying awake in the middle of the night unable to stop reviewing everything going wrong in one’s life. Somehow even the cranky and vocal preschooler whose parents were forced to hurriedly remove it from the hall as the piece was ending got folded in; Carneiro stretched the final passage’s dying notes until the silence of the child’s absence became part of the musical gesture.
Ravel’s brief Pavane pour une infante dèfunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess) was the only chestnut on the program. Carneiro and the orchestra gave it a coloristic lushness, with beautifully shaped phrases and an oceanic physicality to the dynamic swells.
Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto is not a favorite of mine, and soloist James Ehnes was unable to change my mind despite a technically impeccable performance, by turns lyrical and demonically energetic. Conductor, violinist and orchestra get kudos, admiration and astonishment, though, for one of the best-balanced and most cohesive concertos in recent memory. The soloist was always audible and the orchestra was invariably not just supporting the solo but contributing to it, sounding as though there had been far more rehearsal time than could actually have been possible.
Ehnes’ encore was Sibelius’ In the Summer, a joyful piece of perpetual motion fiddling with pizzicato accompaniment. Once again the music leapt off the stage.
