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A Trio of Powerful Tales New York
Isaac Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall
03/05/2025 - & February 22, 2025 (Davis)
George Walker: Sinfonia No. 5 “Visions”
Leonard Bernstein: Serenade (after Plato’s “Symposium”)
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 1 in D Major
Janine Jansen (Violin)
London Symphony Orchestra, Antonio Pappano (Conductor)
A. Pappano, J. Jansen (© Musacchio & Ianniello-EMI Classics/Lukas Beck)
“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything, Rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.”
Plato
“Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the laws of the State always change with them.”
Plato
Harvard-trained Leonard Bernstein and self-educated Franz Liszt were both at home translating unmusical authors–Plato. Petrarch, Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante and Voltaire into music. So, while Plato had mixed emotions about the value and danger of music, Bernstein translated a dinner party conversation about love into one of his most interesting compositions.
Bernstein’s innocently-titled Serenade was one of three works conducted by the London Symphony Orchestra’s new Chief Conductor, Antonio Pappano. And by far the most fascinating.
Briefly, the composer made a five-movement semi‑concerto on five of Plato‑dinner guests (as well as a gate‑crasher). I say “semi” because the violin part was closer to the Sheherazade solo or the viola solo in Harold in Italy. And this was how Janine Jansen handled the music.
Each of the five separated movement had a different definition of love, and a different tempo. The question being: Does one look at the verbal descriptions? Or listen to the music as a beautiful work for violin and orchestra?
Ms. Jansen took the first path. Her lovely Strad gave a lovely elegiac solo for the first “dinner guest”, and changed course–as did Plato–for a non‑satiric Aristophanes. I cheated by looking at the program notes, to see that the comic writer was singing a lullaby, and Ms. Jansen lulled in on her violin, following with a dazzling fugato for Plato’s doctor explaining love.
The last two movements came close to being a concerto. An Adagio showing Bernstein and Jansen at their best. The composer sticking miles away from his Broadway slow‑song schmaltz, and Ms. Jansen playing with fierce intensity.
Finally, we had Bernstein the joker–literally for Plato’s dinner‑party farce. In this case, Ugly Socrates (who knew little about love except his virago wife and a few boys) and Beautiful Alcibiades and his street‑gang, crashing the party.
The start had several terrific moments for Ms. Jansen–and the end had a musical version of drunken revelry, clay vessels broken, decorations torn from the walls. And (methinks) Plato and his guests laughing it off as we applauded.
This was the evening’s highlight for the incandescent LSO. Except that British‑born Italian-heritaged Antonio Pappano had a starring quality from his first downbeat. The Maestro used no baton, but his two hands (and ten fingers) gave all the momentum necessary, and it did work well.
G. Walker (© Pulitzer Prize Committee)
A verbal introduction was necessary since the prodigious Mr. Walker–who died at the age of 96 after finishing this Fifth Symphony–did create another story. Specifically, the massacre of parishioners at a church in South Carolina.
As with the previous work, one wonders whether to follow (or pay reverence to) the event. Or listening to the music. I did the latter, and more than ever appreciated Maestro Pappano’s meticulous and emotional control of the LSO. Every brass outburst or kettledrum thump (and they appeared each two measures) was signalled with authority, played by these brilliant musicians with deft expertise.
On the other hand, the 2015 piece was too reflective of 1950’s American music. Take away the serialism of Roger Sessions, and one had a constantly dissonant, angry, well‑orchestrated but hardly effective music.
Mahler’s First Symphony is played frequently in Carnegie Hall–but never frequently enough for this listener. No Faust, no heavens or hells even hinted at. This was a young self‑assured composer celebrating Nature, celebrating (humorously) Jewish tradition, celebrating music itself with its bounding climax.
Mr. Pappano is young enough, and as a great opera conductor, lyrical enough to stress the youth of the music. Birds peeped, people danced, klezmer-players tootled. And when all six horn‑players stood for the final anthem, one knew this was a towering symphony and a powerful conductor.
Harry Rolnick
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