Classical Music

Whenever Nashville concertgoers attend a classical performance, they are promised works by Beethoven, or Mozart, or Stravinsky, or some other composer. But that may not be what they hear. Just because an ensemble endeavors to undertake a given work, it doesn’t mean that the musicians will perform it adequately, much less flawlessly. Delivered shabbily, the result may instead be music that the composer would never claim as his own. This flashed on me recently, when, in mid-concert, I realized that Beethoven’s name could not rightly be smeared with the ordure that was clogging my ears at that moment.

This happens all the time, and has probably happened, unrecognized, for centuries. But today, thanks to recording technology, nobody has to settle for less than demonstrable mastery. All listeners, everywhere, can now apply the same standard to any group of musicians. As measured by that stern standard, Nashville’s musicians include some world-class virtuosos. They also include a lot who are not. Sometimes both kinds appear onstage together, and music gets nicked and bruised.

Some musical slippage is common—even welcomed—as part of the unique drama of unrecorded live performance: Compellingly powerful musicianship may have wrong notes in it, and impeccably “correct” performances may sound drab. What matters most is focused consistency over time. Musicians are athletes, and like other athletes they have to work to get in shape and work even harder to stay in shape. The fewer performers there are, the harder flaws are to hide. Thus musicians who want to stay in peak form do as much chamber music as they can. So it shouldn’t be surprising that right now, the best classical music in our city is chamber music coming from a handful of ensembles, among them Vanderbilt’s Blair String Quartet, who can play with the best in the world; the Camerata Musicale at Belmont University, which brings together small groups of players to do a wide range of chamber compositions; and the Nashville Chamber Orchestra, which for 12 years now has been commissioning new works that marry Music City sounds—country, bluegrass, Appalachian folk—to “classical” sonorities.

Nashville may be home to all of these chamber ensembles, but the Nashville Symphony remains our city’s classical music flagship. Besides undergirding performances by Nashville Opera and Nashville Ballet, the orchestra plays a lot of quite varied concerts on its own, some of them very ambitious, some of them featuring outstanding guest soloists. Because the orchestra uses some four-score musicians, it’s a lot harder to fine-tune. Even so, Nashville Symphony showed that it could deliver a world-class performance when it debuted in New York’s celebrated Carnegie Hall a little over two years ago. Those who heard the concert were not surprised to see it lauded in The New York Times. Back home again, expectations for the future were high.

Perhaps unrealistically high. The orchestra had been preparing for that concert for a long time, and on its way to perform in New York, it had done a series of dress rehearsals in several cities between here and there. A home concert regularly gets only half a dozen rehearsals, including one dress, to prepare everything on the program. Making the situation at home even more challenging, the orchestra’s regular venue is Jackson Hall, no match acoustically for Carnegie Hall. Nevertheless, fairly or not, every Nashville Symphony performance since the Big Apple has been measured against that pinnacle, and few have measured up. Paradoxically, the risk may be even greater when the orchestra plays with a renowned guest soloist whose brilliance can shine into unswept corners. Several such soloists are booked for this spring. How the music will fare remains to be heard.

Chamber music groups may enjoy an unfair advantage over the larger orchestra. But in Music City right now, measured against the sternest standards of delivered sound, they’re delivering the best classical performances to be heard. With this in mind, here are several items—including a couple Symphony offerings—that between now and June may tickle the ear.

Season classical music picks

Blair String Quartet The Blair School of Music’s resident string quartet will play one major concert this season, 8 p.m. Feb. 7 in the school’s Ingram Hall. On their own, they’ll tackle some very demanding late Beethoven, the Quartet in B-flat Major, opus 130, and the gigantic Grosse Fuge for string quartet, opus 133. Assisted by pianist Craig Nies, they’ll premiere Blair colleague Michael Alec Rose’s piano quintet “A Grammar of Hope.”

These four musicians will be performing on several other occasions, and in a variety of configurations, this winter and spring. On Feb. 17, they join other Blair colleagues in an evening showcasing BMI composer-in-residence Robert Beaser. Their contribution is not a work by Beaser, but the “First Quartet” of American maverick composer Charles Ives (1874-1954). In addition, two quartet members, first violinist Christian Teal and cellist Felix Wang, will join violinist Carolyn Huebl and Craig Nies in two concerts as part of a series delivering all of Beethoven’s sonatas for violin and piano and for cello and piano. Both happen in Ingram Hall at 8 p.m., the first on Jan. 10, the second on March 28. Superb musicianship can be expected.