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Fear not the Dancing Dodecaphon New York
Alice Tully Hall
09/16/2024 -
Katie Jenkins: Awakening (World Premiere)
Arnold Schoenberg: Piano Concerto, Opus 42
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Opus 67
Max Hammond (Pianist)
Juilliard Orchestra, David Robertson (Conductor)
D.Robertson (© Chris Lee)
“From the standpoint of music, Schoenberg is mere trash. It is hideous. Not the sort of thing which an American audience can enjoy.”
Evening Telegraph, February 5, 1923
“Life was so easy; Suddenly hatred broke out; A grave situation was created; But life goes on.”
Arnold Schoenberg’s (unpublished) program note for his Piano Concerto
If last night’s Juilliard Orchestra concert was typical of the ten‑concert September Juilliard Festival, New York should have been vibrating. Though truth to tell, nobody–nobody–but conductor David Robertson could produce such an evening.
The last few years when Maestro Robertson led the New York Philharmonic, nobody could exit Avery Fisher Hall without trembling at the excitement. (That’s sheer exaggeration. NY Phil audiences forgot the music the moment they left their seats.) He is a master of precision, his baton has a Nureyev grace, and he pushed the Phil–or any orchestra–with note‑perfect, never ending urgency.
Not that Mr. Robertson is simply a dynamo. The first two works tonight were played with almost dream‑like TV vernal euphoria. That could have been expected in Welsh composer Katie Jenkins’ paean to her home country and New York. But Arnold Schoenberg??
Granted it was pianist Max Hammond who set the pace for the rarely-played Concerto. But David Robertson, alert to every nuance of the soloist made it sound...well, less dodecaphonic than a dream of Viennese Weltschmerz.
M. Hammond/K. Jenkins (© Dan Renzetti/Courtesy of the artist)
Ms. Jenkins was on hand for Awakenings, commissioned by Juilliard. It was a lovely piece of atmosphere. Melodies were born in strings and flute, echoes in the brass alternated with sylvan tunes and a few sudden eruptions. At times (she will probably hate me for this), it had the aura of Vaughan Williams. But more often, I felt the tone‑painting of America’s Roy Harris.
Above all, it showed a composer of undoubted orchestral mastery, and an honesty of emotion. Perhaps a second hearing will give a greater sense of cohesion. Tonight it was like a beautifully illustrated picture book.
The second work was expected to be doom. I had heard Schoenberg’s Concerto once on YouTube and vowed never again. The reason? I had been reading that this was the most tone‑rowish/twelve‑note motif in the composer’s later repertoire. And I was trying to follow the transmutations of notes, the algebraic equations.
More the fool I. The young Max Hammond, playing without a score, started with three measures right out of Brahms. The rest of the Concerto, while certainly dissonant, certainly with measures of that single tone‑row, was, as they say on the lousiest radio stations, “Easy listening.” (Yuck)
The waltz was not hidden away as in Pierrot or the solo piano works. This opening waltz, with more major and minor keys, had a Straussian swing (Richard, not the Johanns). The following sections were more fragmented, but Mr. Hammond had two cadenzas which were more expressive than pyrotechnical. (Schoenberg wasn’t a terribly good pianist!). And after a Mahlerian short funeral march, it finished with almost jaunty happiness.
The Juilliard Orchestra was fine. But Mr. Hammond, without any hesitation, without even the illusion of difficulty, sailed through the Concerto with the finesse, the grace, the ebullience of a Mozart.
A coterie of six scholarly gentlemen left my row during the intermission. “Why,” they must have pondered, “do we have to hear the Fifth once again?”
Their aristocratic mien was imbecilic. The answer to “another Fifth” was obvious–not in the most iconic four notes in musical history. But in the first eight notes. For David Robertson had the singular chutzpah to eschew Beethoven’s fermata, snub the eighth‑note rest, and let roll the most crackling, exciting first movement I’ve ever heard.
Yes, various Phils and Concertgebouw might have given more orchestral color. But I can’t imagine an opening more incandescent, more crackling, more filled with non‑stop pure unadulterated voltage. The composer called for brio. Robertson forgot that playful word and went for the jugular, and he succeeded.
His second movement was anything but tranquil. Mr. Robertson started with a lyrical cantabile in the strings, but managed to transport the Juilliard players to a fervent, this leading to another fire-breathing scherzo.
As for the finale, the Juilliard strings whacked their strings so every note was a sforzando, and the usually unheard timpani beat out a mighty finale.
The last measures are things of jokes (“He fooled me again!”). In this case, I wished that Beethoven had continued ending after ending after ending, if only to hear how David Robertson could make the music sizzle.
I imagine some pedants might scorn this quantum feel, this never-enigmatic full‑speed ahead blockbuster. The composer himself, even half deaf at this time, would have raised his ears, watched the movements of the baton and thought, “Now I can’t be certain that these are my notes. But this is one helluva Fifth Symphony.”
Harry Rolnick
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