Carnegie Hall: Iván Fischer Conducts the Orchestra of St. Luke's

I attended yesterday evening's concert by the Orchestra of St. Luke's at Stern Auditorium primarily to hear Iván Fischer conduct Bartók.  Over the years, I've become more interested in that composer's work as I've grown more aware of its importance to twentieth century music.  Originally, I was attracted to the string quartets and that led inevitably to a greater appreciation of Bartók's orchestral pieces.   And there is no doubt that Fischer is one of the foremost interpreters of Bartók's music.  Recently, I listened to an archived broadcast on WQXR in which he led the Budapest Festival Orchestra, which he cofounded, in a superlative performance of the concert version of The Miraculous Mandarin from the 2013 Lucerne Festival.

But Bartók was not the only Hungarian composer on the program.  The evening began with a performance of the Serenade, Op. 3 (1906) by Leo Weiner.  Difficult though it now may be to imagine, in the early twentieth century Weiner was held in as high esteem among both audiences and critics as his compatriots Bartók and Kodály.  Listening to the Serenade, it is easier to understand why this may have been.  The work was pleasant enough, but it was steeped in the traditions of the nineteenth century.  There was no depth to it and nothing to jar an audience out of its complacency.  It was this lack of innovation that eventually doomed Weiner to obscurity while Bartók and Kodály surged ahead in their search for a new idiom for a new century.

The second work was the Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 (1845) by Robert Schumann. Though Schumann is widely known for his piano compositions, this was the only concerto he ever wrote.  Its first movement was actually composed as a Fantasia for piano and orchestra and was only expanded into a full length concerto at the urging of Schumann's wife Clara who performed the piece at its premiere.  Especially in its opening movement, the work is fiery and passionate and so completely embodies the Romantic ethos that it has become one of the best known of all piano concertos.  The soloist yesterday evening was Jonathan Biss.

Bartók's Hungarian Sketches (1931) opened the second half of the program.  These are orchestrations of five piano pieces Bartók had composed between 1908 and 1911.  Though brief and, by the composer's own admission, written for money, these are not minor works. All are carefully thought out and, if not as imaginative as some other of the composer's work, are well worth hearing.  I especially enjoyed the lyricism of the first sketch, An Evening at the Village.

The final piece on the program was Mozart's final Symphony No. 41  in C, K. 551, the "Jupiter," (1788).  Though there is no record that it was ever performed during the composer's lifetime, so often is it played nowadays that it has grown almost too familiar.  It is difficult for a twenty-first century audience to grasp how astonishing the piece must sounded when new, most especially the final movement with its five-voice fugato.  But it is still impossible for any listener to become completely inured to the greatness of this symphony.  Quite simply, it is one of the greatest works of genius ever produced by any artist.