When asked why she wanted to attend an orchestra concert this weekend, a sixth grader said that she thought it would be "an occasion to listen to a peaceful kind of music." Benjamin Zander, the conductor, replied, "well, you're in for a shock!"
Indeed, Thursday night's extraordinary "Bose Discovery Series" concert by the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, featuring pianist and well-known Gershwin interpreter Kevin Cole, was an experience that was anything but tranquil or boring; the works by Ravel, Gershwin and Stravinsky are so thrilling, personal and intoxicating that each often ends an orchestra program on its own.
Located in Harvard's beautiful all-wooden Sanders theater, the concert had an intimate (if not somewhat cramped), personal feel - rare for a concert by a full-sized symphony orchestra. With the resonant interior and musicians just several feet away from the audience, the sound reverberated clearly and forcefully.
Zander was himself one of the best parts of the evening. The "Discovery" series allows him to briefly introduce each piece before playing it, and his British accent and charming personality helped to bring the music alive. He spoke for both seasoned classical music lovers and beginners, telling anecdotes about each piece and composer, and he had the orchestra play important excerpts beforehand so that nobody would miss them.
Another highlight was Cole's performance of Gershwin's Concerto in F. Commissioned so that Gershwin could write something more "serious" to be played in concert halls (his "Rhapsody in Blue" is considered too "pop-ish" in some circles), this piece was the first jazz-inspired work to accomplish just that. The Concerto opens with a Charleston-inspired rhythm, continues with a wild toccata and features a slow, blues-inspired second movement with a sexy trumpet solo; you can picture George writing it alone in his 20s New York apartment, in front of his piano, cigar in mouth.
Cole is said to play exactly as Gershwin had in his short, 38-year life, and he meets such high expectations. He's everything a piano soloist should be: confident, radiant and exuberant. But his uniqueness comes from, as Zander mentioned, his truly American traits: he is optimistic, clean, hard-edged, "fantastically exciting" and not filled with the "old world neuroses" that a European counterpart might experience.
The concert opened with Ravel's "Valse" and closed with Stravinsky's "Petrushka," a program order that would be reversed by most other orchestras. But Zander, always communicating directly to the audience, said that he felt "Valse," while on the surface a fun, catchy, whimsical waltz was actually too subversive and pessimistic to be stuck at the end. The beauty of this "Discovery" concert, however, was that he then proceeded to tell the audience why.
"La Valse, Choreographic poem" starts with a soft, barely audible, low bass chord and continues to pick up until it gets to a colorful, fast dance pace. In a work of contrast, Ravel paints a picture that is both bright and murky, soft and loud (the two dynamic extremes come within one second of each other). And just as we're ready to put on Viennese evening wear and start dancing, Ravel ends the piece with an abrupt five notes in machine-gun succession. This was, after all, written right before WWII in a euphoric, relieved 1920s Europe, and this was Ravel's warning shot.
Stravinsky's "Petrushka," a musical story in four parts, was accompanied by a projection of the composer's own words explaining the plot of the music. In short, three puppets are brought alive during a fair, and a tragic love triangle ensues between the nice Petrushka, an evil Moor and a ballerina who likes Russian folk dances. At the end, the Moor kills Petrushka, a magician turns the characters back into puppets and the story ends on Stravinsky's characteristic C and F-sharp - known to symbolize the composer's own personal agony.
The orchestra performed the incredibly dense score enthusiastically, and navigated the clashing meters and complicated dissonance with no problem. "Petrushka" helped usher in a new musical era at the beginning of the 20th century and still sounds modern today. Russian folk songs are scattered throughout and musical vignettes, such as a fun, organ grinder scene, bring the story alive. At the end, the audience in Sanders Theater was on their feet, excited and screaming "Bravo!" at the tops of their lungs.
The Boston Philharmonic, not even fully professional (some are amateurs and students), makes classical music less stuffy and more accessible. As another sixth grader wrote of classical music when asked why he wanted to hear the concert, "some people say that it's bad, some that it's good. I'd like to find out for myself." Here's an opportunity for everyone to find out for themselves.<$>
