The Oregon Symphony’s three most recent concerts offered lots of variety, ranging from brand new works to beloved standards. The main strain of commonality among the three offerings was that they were led by conductors who have ties to Germany and Austria: Markus Stenz, Carlos Kalmar, and David Danzmayr (Cologne, Vienna, and Salzburg). Is there some kind of Germanic invasion underway? I don’t think so. But I will have my Tarnhelm ready just in case. 

In the meantime, to keep you apprised of the situation, here are my reviews of those three programs with the home-town-band at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

Quicksilver filigree

The Oregon Symphony concert on October 8 offered an interesting sonic sandwich. The outer selections were beloved gems that everyone knows, but the two inner pieces were difficult to grasp and somewhat esoteric. German conductor Markus Stenz led the orchestra, teaming up with Augustin Hadelich–one of the very best violinists in the world–to perform the US premiere of Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy’s Violin Concerto. Co-commissioned by the Oregon Symphony, the Aspen Music Festival, and philharmonie zuidnederland (South Netherlands Philharmonic), Dennehy wrote the concerto especially for Hadelich, who amazingly surmounted the technical jujitsu required to play the piece. 

Dennehy’s Violin Concerto opened with a blitz of notes in the uppermost register of Hadelich’s violin. The furious blur of notes created an eerie atmosphere that was offset by a slow-moving and much lower thrum from the orchestra. It was as if a hummingbird were buzzing above a foggy seascape with whales or big ships moving below. The contrasting sound of the soloist against the orchestra was unrelenting throughout the first movement, and it made me think that if Hadelich were paid a dollar for each note he played, he would be a millionaire just from the first movement.

The second movement went in the opposite direction, with Hadelich expressing long, lyrical lines – still in the upper register but not quite as high as the first movement – against undulating strings in the orchestra. Along the way, Hadelich created slow, extended glissandos that were smoothly elegant, and near the end of the movement, the horns accompanied him with a very light, sonic buzz. 

In the third movement, Hadelich generated another round of quicksilver filigree, and the orchestra executed a number of tricky interjections. But the piece ended suddenly, as if the composer ran out of ideas. The audience responded enthusiastically, and Dennehy (oddly dressed down with an untucked shirt) joined Hadelich and Stenz for a bow. Hadelich returned to center stage and played his beautiful arrangement of Carlos Gardel’s tango “Por Una Cabeza.”

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Stravinsky wrote Jeu de cartes (Card Game), a ballet in three deals, in 1936 for the nascent American Ballet Company, and it was last performed by the Oregon Symphony in January of 2007. This time around, the musicians gave it a scintillating whirl with every section getting a piece of the action. But without an accompanying visual element, there was no way to figure out what was happening during the card game. 

According to the program notes, the Joker interrupts the game until the third and final deal when he is royally flushed out by a fistful of Hearts. But which instrument or instruments portrayed the Joker? Quirky sonic passages erupted throughout the piece, and they must have represented various cards or sets of cards. Except for the fragmentary quotes from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, Ravel’s La Valse, and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the joke was on the audience, which graciously rewarded the orchestra and Stenz a warm round of applause. 

The references to The Barber of Seville tied nicely to the program’s opening number, the Overture from Rossini’s opera. The orchestra excelled in its rendition of this famous number, putting everyone in a good mood.

The concert concluded with Ravel’s Boléro, a real crowd-pleaser. Stenz deserved high marks for putting two snare drummers (Michael Roberts and Sergio Carreno) front and center, between the cellos and second violins. Roberts, who maintained a repetitive pattern for the entire piece with Carreno joining him at the very end, played the beginning so ultra-softly that it sounded as if he were playing off-stage. Amazing!

During the performance, an audience member in the balcony got up to exit and then collapsed. Six or more doctors immediately leapt to action and took care of the person – you could see the screen of the defibrillator glowing. It was an odd way to experience Ravel’s Boléro, but – as a colleague of mine noted – if you are going to have a heart episode, the symphony is a good place to have it because so many medical personnel love great music. In any case, the orchestra and Stenz marched the Boléro to its triumphant finale with the entire ensemble ablaze. Olé!

A sonic mélange

Carlos Kalmar, the Oregon Symphony’s music director from 2003-2021, returned to the podium at The Schnitz to lead the orchestra (October 22) in a strong program that included works by Richard Strauss, Carl Nielsen, Ruth Crawford Seeger, and Gabriella Smith. All of the purely instrumental pieces sounded superb, with Nielsen’s Fourth Symphony (aka “The Inextinguishable”) providing an intense emotional journey to close out the evening. 

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Nielsen’s works have been scoring more and more performances over the past twenty or so years – a long overdue recognition of the Danish composer’s talent. The orchestra last performed Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4 in 2011, also with Kalmar on the podium, and I recall that it was an exceptional interpretation. This time around was also superb, starting from the opening statement with flutes and brass leading the way. Excellent dynamics throughout: big decays; an elegant, hymnlike passage that featured the woodwinds, followed by a solemn section for timpani and plucking basses; and a wonderful emphatic descending motif highlighted the piece. The finale escalated fantastically with Jonathan Greeney and Sergio Carreno pummeling away on two sets of timpani.

But Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) suffered from too much volume from the orchestra and too little from soprano Maeve Höglund. With the new sound system installed in the hall last year, you would think that balance wouldn’t be a problem, but it is. Kalmar, who conducted the piece with the orchestra in 2013, elicited fortes that smothered Höglund’s beautiful voice in a wash of sonic colors. Even understanding her words while following the printed text in the program was difficult, especially in the first two songs. Thankfully, the third, “Beim Schlafengen” (While going to sleep) offered lighter orchestration, so you could hear Höglund all the way through, and concertmaster Sarah Kwak delivered a lovely solo between the second and third stanzas. Yet, in the fourth movement, the orchestral sound again took over, and even though Höglund could be heard whenever she was in her upper register, most of the poetic text got buried.

Women composers are finally getting a lot more notice by orchestras around the world, and one of the most overlooked is Ruth Crawford Seeger, a revolutionary presence whose life was far too short (she died at age 52 in 1953). In 1931, Seegar completed a string quartet that was ahead of its time in the way that it explored new sounds. She then orchestrated its third movement, which is just a handful of minutes in length. The piece began in the lower strings with a gnawing intensity that grew stronger and higher, gradually expanding in a multi-layered fashion before subsiding to its quiet beginnings. The single movement left me wanting to hear more. Alas! 

Gabriella Smith’s Tumblebird Contrails took listeners on a trip to the seaside where we heard ocean waves, birds, fog horns, and big ships in a sonic mélange created by thrumming strings, light percussion, glissando-ing trombones, shimmering cymbals, and pizzicato-ing basses. The musicians employed a variety of extended techniques to create an impression that put everyone at the beach. The piece fluctuated between loud and soft, generating lovely impressions that finally just vanished.

A blaze of glory

The Oregon Symphony’s concert on November 5^th, under the baton of its music director, David Danzmayr, featured a brand-new work by the orchestra’s creative chair, Gabriel Kahane. Entitled The Right to be Forgotten, it dealt with Internet addiction and the quest to find more meaning in one’s life. Kahane called it a folk opera, but it seemed more of a folk musical. The style of singing, spoken segments, and the use of amplification definitely leaned toward musical theater rather than opera.

The Right to be Forgotten told the story of composer/performer Nathaniel Levitan who was basically Kahane’s alter-ego. Levitan has become addicted to using various types of social media, which he calls “the feed.” But the drag of delivering content – much of which is ephemeral – has zapped his creative juices, and he is unable to write a song cycle for a commission. After a year-long absence from all-things-internet, he turns to a website called artproject.ai and interacts with a trio of voices (Nathalie Joachim, Alex Sopp, and Holcombe Waller). In the end, Levitan reconnects with his family history (Jews who escaped Nazi Germany) and with his love for a real live audience rather than a virtual one.

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Kahane can sing marvelously in different styles, gliding from a near Country Western twang to a smooth pop groove while delivering difficult notes – much of which is done in a superior grade falsetto – with uncanny ease. He gave the trio passages that were wrapped in beguilingly close harmonies (plus intricate flute licks for Joachim and Sopp), and he generated an outstanding score of incidental music for the orchestra that augmented seamlessly with the storyline – especially the use of a slapstick to signal a change.

His folk opera also had some excellent poetic imagery like “And a murder of crows/Are the only ones dancing tonight.” Kahane is a master at poking fun at himself and others. Some of the lines – for example, “Fifteen US Senators who look like breakfast burritos” – generated peals of laughter, but that might also have gotten in the way of the live recording for a CD release later. (The audience was forewarned.)

But the text mentioned lots of things that will be completely out of date twenty years from now: Pokemon Go, Angry Birds, Milkshake Duck, Martha Stewart, Tea Party, Occupy, Sad incels, Diehard birthers, and such. I think that will limit the long-term relevance of Kahane’s concoction, and the result will be that The Right to be Forgotten, despite the value of its message, will itself be forgotten.

Although Lera Auerbach has explicitly stated that her Icarus is not a narrative of the Greek legend, it was easy to make all sorts of association while listening to her one-movement work. Snapping sounds from the basses and furious strings that were in part dissonant seemed to suggest a struggle at the outset. After briefly subsiding, the brass took up a heavy, slow, and angular theme that was menacing and joined by the entire orchestra. A solo by concertmaster Sarah Kwak evoked sadness, and then the orchestra created sounds that gradually went higher and higher; a theremin (played by Darryl Kubian, who drove to Oregon from Vermont for the concerts) added to the sonic collage. Finally, we were left with the theremin and amplified crystal glasses. Icarus may have crashed, but his legacy lives on celestially.

The orchestra played Beethoven’s Third Symphony (Eroica) to perfection. It began with intensity and verve and ended in a blaze of glory. Danzmayr and forces just knocked it out of the park. All of the musicians played with absolute emotional commitment that made the entire piece electrifying. The first violins had some kind of mind meld going. I was just astounded at how they dug into the accented notes – all dipping forward at the same time like a rowing team – while executing an exceptionally fast passage. The horns were golden. The woodwinds too. It was a complete package. You could stack the performance of Danzmayr and company against any recording by any great orchestra. I could gush more, but holy smokes, that was a life-enhancing experience!