A Lively Year
The Classical View
By Larry Adams
Have the ghosts of performances past come back to remonstrate with me for any uncharitable remarks I made this year? “I protest!” I call out from my bedchamber. Even as my door knocker assumes the face of Helen Huang, or as I hear the tuneless rattling of the Romeros’ guitar strings, or as the kindly, grandfatherly apparition of Jean-Pierre Rampal cavils at my remarks, I protest again that most of my musical encounters for the last year have been like the “Dance of the Blessed Spirits.”
Take, for example, the 50th anniversary showing of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra—some pretty exemplary playing there, along with an unusual delight or two and some surprising soloists. Bending the definition of a year—you will allow me that artistic license, I’m sure—the most consistently fine performance dated back to last December, when Canadian pianist Jon Kimura Parker ate the Schumann piano concerto alive. It may not have been the piece that I wanted to hear him play, but he did it so well that he made me notice excellences in a work that I still feel is more virtuosic than great. The real stunner on the program was Holst’s The Planets; it was, perhaps, the most purely orchestral moment in a golden anniversary season that also featured astounding moments of music-making in performances of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and the Sibelius second symphony.
The other surprising soloist this year was the gorgeously arrayed Awadagin Pratt, whose performance of the Saint-Saêns Piano Concerto No. 4 was every bit as colorful as his mode of dress. Pratt’s recordings are substantially more reticent than his live performances, so one of my Christmas dreams features a poster for an upcoming concert that trumpets: “Pratt’s back and the NSO’s got him!”
Two other warm NSO memories for Christmas present include the unforgettable Judy Collins singing Jacques Brel with the Symphony serving as backup band—absolutely electrifying—and one of the most stunning performances that I’ve ever heard, live or recorded, of a score by Gustav Mahler. To be balanced, the NSO’s recent performance of the Mahler seventh symphony was not without some problems, but the first movement was revelatory, epic, astounding—but, mostly, live. You’ll never get to hear this again. All the more reason to make ticket purchases to the NSO one of your top resolutions for the new year.
In the warm and homey category, memory draws me to this summer’s Sewanee Summer Music Festival. If the student orchestra had a splendid failure in its attempts at Mahler’s fifth symphony, the overall range of orchestral and chamber concerts at this event was very rich. The concert by the brass students was visceral in its power, but the music performed by the Tokyo String Quartet was so splendid, so polished, so very apt in almost every detail that I thought I had been bewitched. If such was the case, it was part of the general enchantment shared by audiences lucky enough to attend a performance by the Tokyo aggregation. One week later, a friend from Atlanta chanced to remark casually that he had traveled to the wilds of north Georgia to catch a performance of the same program. It was, he related, some of the finest music-making he had ever encountered. The Tokyo String Quartet will be at TPAC in the new year, and you can bet they’ll return in these notes for a Christmas future.
New music by local composers has been a welcome addition in my musical haunts this past year. I realize that Mark O’Connor’s second fiddle concerto, performed with the NSO as part of Tennessee’s bicentennial celebration, will be a massive popular success, but I found much more to like in his wistful little “Appalachia Waltz.” The performance of this work at Yo Yo Ma’s concert with the NSO was sweet and succinct—everything the concerto was not.
I was also delighted this year by two pieces I encountered at the Blair School of Music, Michael Kurek’s second string quartet and Michael Alec Rose’s wind quintet. The Kurek piece was especially evocative, calling up strong images, and the familial feel of the Rose was as rambunctious as Christmas at the Crachits. Lucky us, the Blair String Quartet has recorded the Kurek quartet for New World Records, and the performance captured on tape is even stronger than the one I heard live. Here’s hoping that the spirit of Christmas future will expunge the doom of most new music and allow us the happy prospect of a recording for the Rose composition.
There’s no stopping this review of musical spirits from the year past. Many more could be named—Nashville Opera’s La Bohème, the Palladian Ensemble and Malcolm Bilson at David Lipscomb, and a Belmont Camerata performance of Albinoni. It brings a lump of fond memory to my throat. Remember these, kind reader, before you bestow me a lump of coal for the season. Merry Christmas everyone, and may your 1997 be filled with the spirit of music.
There’s no stopping this review of musical spirits from the year past. Many more could be named—Nashville Opera’s La Bohème, the Palladian Ensemble and Malcolm Bilson at David Lipscomb, and a Belmont Camerata performance of Albinoni. It brings a lump of fond memory to my throat. Remember these, kind reader, before you bestow me a lump of coal for the season. Merry Christmas everyone, and may your 1997 be filled with the spirit of music.
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