The Nashville Symphony Orchestra’s season-opening concerts last weekend revealed exactly what this ensemble can do when everything clicks. On Saturday, the NSO under its music adviser Leonard Slatkin delivered classical renditions that were both dead-on accurate and passionately romantic. In performances with Elvis Costello the following night, the orchestra proved it could swing as if it were a bona fide big band.
Saturday’s performance had a double billing: it was both the gala opening of the NSO’s 2007-08 season, and it was a celebration of the orchestra’s magnificent new Schoenstein & Co. pipe organ. Andrew Risinger, organist at Nashville’s West End United Methodist Church, took the instrument on a thrilling test drive.
The concert opened with a hybrid arrangement of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor. This is the famous organ work that has served as the spooky background music in many a second-rate horror movie. In its program notes, the NSO observes that, “Of all the creations of Bach, this is one of the most original.”
What the NSO fails to mention, however, is that most music scholars are now reasonably certain that old Johann Sebastian never wrote that work. There are two good reasons to doubt it: for one, there’s no original manuscript to establish authorship. For another, the piece from a technical standpoint kind of, well, sucks. The counterpoint is awkward. And the voice leading is sloppy. It stands to reason that Bach, the greatest compositional technician in history, would never have written such crap.
And yet, the Toccata and Fugue is still great fun (in a campy sort of way), and Risinger and the NSO milked it for all it’s worth. The performance featured the kind of hybrid arrangement for which Slatkin is famous. Risinger opened with the toccata, playing it as an organ solo. Slatkin and the NSO followed with Leopold Stokowski’s famously bombastic orchestral arrangement of the fugue.
The organ’s sound was perhaps most notable for its reverb. Those powerful bass pedals seemed overwhelming inside the acoustically marvelous Schermerhorn—it was the sonic equivalent of standing under a fire hose. Still, the organ revealed a treble range that was both rich and appealing.
Risinger played his part with fire and virtuosity. In the fugue, Slatkin took a different approach, placing a welcome emphasis on polish and elegance. It made the arrangement seem almost like—dare we say—a good piece.
Next, Risinger followed with Maurice Duruflé’s Prelude and Fugue on the Name ALAIN for Solo Organ. This was intended to show how the organ sounds unaccompanied, and it was indeed impressive. The instrument’s seemingly infinite number of stops, producing sound effects ranging from brass to woodwinds to strings to whatever, created as much harmonic color as a full-blown orchestra. And the organ’s dynamic range called to mind Vladimir Horowitz at his extreme best.
Without question, both organ and orchestra sounded best in the final two pieces, in large part because both pieces are masterpieces. Samuel Barber’s Toccata Festiva for Organ and Orchestra boasts this composer’s typical combination of melodic sweetness and hellfire virtuosity. Risinger and the NSO dovetailed seamlessly throughout the performance. In the work’s remarkable solo section for foot pedals alone, Risinger was a veritable speed demon, giving himself and the organ a thorough aerobic workout.
Slatkin and the NSO got it exactly right in Camille Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3 in C minor “Organ Symphony.” They played fast sections with passion, slow sections with poetry, and the finale with majesty and excitement. It was exactly the kind of performance we’d expect from a first-rate orchestra.
Costello
In recent years, there’s been some legitimate concern about the fate of pops orchestras. These ensembles once could rely on a steady stream of talent from both Broadway and the jazz world. But how would pops orchestras do in the age of rock?
The answer, apparently, is fantastic, at least when it comes to Elvis Costello. This rocker has long been comfortable working with orchestras. And on Sunday he gave an unforgettable performance with the NSO.
The concert, under NSO resident conductor Albert-George Schram, opened with Costello’s Il Sogno Suite, an instrumental work the rocker composed in 2000 to accompany a performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Stylistically, the piece was a real hodgepodge. It was an odd mix of Renaissance period music (those prominent dulcimer solos), John Williams soundtrack (the lush strings) and big band romp (Puck was expressed through a jazz saxophone). Yet the piece was also amazingly approachable, and it the won the composer some polite classical applause.
The thunderous ovations came later, when Costello picked up his guitar and began singing. He occasionally performed tunes with his trademark rhythmic drive—“Veronica” was especially exciting. But he was at his orchestral best in such ballads as “She” and “The Scarlet Tide,” proving once again that for all his cool cynicism, Costello is a sentimentalist at heart.
