Developing Pictures
Works by Mussorgsky and Franck just might overcome the limitations of Nashville Symphony’s current performance space
by Marcel Smith
Nashville Symphony
feat. guest conductor Bernhard Gueller and violinist Chee-Yun
8 p.m. Nov. 15-16 atTPAC’s Jackson Hall
For information, call the Symphony ticket office at 783-1212 or Ticketmaster at 255-ARTS
A famous old song nails the problem: “How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?” Nashville classical music aficionados caught their own glimpse of Paree when our symphony performed in Carnegie Hall two years ago and drew solid praise from The New York Times. The praise was earned, and the performance validated supporters’ belief that the Nashville Symphony has the potential to become a big-league ensemble. Our orchestra has indeed played very well at home on occasion, but the Carnegie Hall experience also made clear how rare such occasions are: Mostly the orchestra sounds ho-hum—not bad, but not very good either.
If this one night in New York City raised the stakes for the Nashville Symphony, the more recent arrival of Blair School of Music’s superb new Ingram Hall and the announcement of the symphony’s own plans to build a state-of-the-art concert hall have only raised the stakes further. Finally, local audiences can and will get to experience classical music in the kind of space that allows them to hear what they should be hearing. Until now, the excuse has been that TPAC’s Jackson Hall, the orchestra’s home venue, is a multipurpose space, not tailor-made for acoustic performances; one does what one can.
A good acoustic hall is certainly a without-which-not; it is likewise a minefield. It will enable truly good sound to sound truly good, but it will also reveal inferior sound in all its inferiority. So if the Nashville Symphony wants to do justice to its new home when the building opens in 2006, the ensemble must learn not just to make do with the limitations imposed by Jackson Hall—it must learn to transcend them. The good news is that some programming choices work better than others at Jackson Hall. This weekend’s concert is a good example—one that may bring out both the orchestra’s strengths and its weaknesses.
On its face, the listed program makes good sense: Two large, dramatic pieces frame a lyrical violin concerto. César Franck’s The Accursed Hunter, an 1882 adaptation of an 18th century German ballad about a hunter whose arrogant blasphemy leads to his damnation, is something Disney might have chosen for Fantasia. This crafty artifact should work fine as an opener for the other big piece, Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, composed for piano in 1874 but heard on this program in Maurice Ravel’s masterful 1922 orchestration. If the Franck is a solid lead-off single, the Mussorgsky/Ravel is a grand slam.
Mussorgsky’s musical exhibition was prompted by an actual one commemorating the 1873 death at age 39 of a dear friend, the artist/architect Victor Hartmann. Both men shared a passionate desire to produce art portraying Russian life. Hartmann’s 10 images range from a grotesquely carved wooden nutcracker to a horrific Russian witch feeding on human bones to a splendid design for the Great Gate of Kiev. Mussorgsky/Ravel transforms the images into musical substance. Even without program notes, this is superb music—strong, colorful, harmonically audacious, exotic, dramatic—building to a finish as splendid as the Kremlin’s domes.
Between these grandeurs on the Nashville Symphony program comes Sergei Prokofiev’s brilliantly melodious second violin concerto, like a 20th century stained-glass window ornately framed. Perhaps best known today for the whimsical Peter and the Wolf, Prokofiev was a prolific and versatile genius whose work includes operas based on Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. From 1918 until 1935, he lived in the West, touring as composer and pianist. Then, at age 44, telling his Parisian friends he needed “to hear the Russian language in my ears,” he chose to return to Stalinist Russia, where state dogma gradually ate him alive.
Prokofiev began this concerto in Paris, just before that return. It reflected, he said, the “nomadic concert-tour existence” he had been living. An unwitting farewell to political and artistic liberty, it was from the first a success. The opening phrase announces the violin’s singing qualities, celebrated throughout the composition. The three-movement form is elegantly architectured; the slow second movement contains one of the composer’s glorious tuneful outpourings, and the lively and dance-like last movement showcases lyrical bravura.
In a good space, this program could epitomize classical music’s unique acoustic sonorities. In Jackson Hall, maybe so, maybe not. Prokofiev’s concerto especially is problematical: The soloist may well be overwhelmed. Everything depends on how guest conductor Bernhard Gueller can adapt to the space he has to work in. Gueller, who began his career as a cellist in Stuttgart, earned acclaim in 1981 when he conducted the Stuttgart Radio Symphony on a national tour, and has since led many orchestras all over the world. In this program, he has work to do.
The violin soloist is Korean-born Chee-Yun. She came to the United States at 13; at 15, she appeared as a soloist in Carnegie Hall. She won the Avery Fisher Award in 1990. Her debut album in 1993 drew high praise from Gramophone for exquisite musicianship. She has played repertory from Mendelssohn and Saint-Saëns to Penderecki and Szymanowski with major orchestras all over the world. Listeners this weekend may or may not find out how good she really is.
In the promised new symphony hall, her odds would be excellent. In Jackson Hall, the odds are better for the orchestra without her: Both the Franck and the Mussorgsky/Ravel are big strapping athletes able to defend themselves. It’s not unthinkable the entire evening could be a success, but neither is it a certainty.
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