While most of New York City waited in line to see the premiere of the new Star Wars film on Friday evening, I rode the subway down to Cooper Union in the Village to attend a free performance given by The Orchestra Now, a training orchestra and part of a master’s degree program sponsored by Bard College. I had never before heard of the ensemble, which was only established earlier this year and whose music director is Leon Botstein, also music director of the American Symphony Orchestra and, not coincidentally, President of Bard College. I was also attracted by the eclectic program which included works by Mozart, Weiner, Schumann and Ligeti.
The program opened with Mozart's Symphony No. 31 in D major, K. 297/300a (1778), nicknamed the "Paris." This exuberant piece is a always a crowd pleaser, and for good reason - Mozart, traveling though Europe in search of employment that would allow him to leave his hated position at Salzburg, here much more deliberately than in other works set out to create a symphony that would delight his listeners and bring him the celebrity he had once enjoyed as a child prodigy. To this end, he followed Parisian custom by opening his allegro movements with le premier coup d'archet with all members of the orchestra playing in unison. He even went so far as to rewrite the andante to suit the taste of Joseph Legros, leader of the Concert Spirituel, even though Mozart himself saw nothing wrong with the original movement as he had written it. (Both are excellent, so much so that even now musicologists are not completely certain whether it was the andante in 3/4 time or that in 6/8, the version most often played today, that was the original.) More important to the development of Mozart's future music was his first use on this occasion of clarinets in a symphonic orchestration. The result of the composer's exertions was a shimmering work that betrayed no sense of the anguish he must surely have felt over the final illness of his mother who died on July 3, only two weeks after the Concert Spirituel's first performance.
The next work was Leó Weiner's Serenade for Small Orchestra, Op. 3 (1906). I had heard a performance of this piece two years ago when Iván Fischer, noted for his interpretations of Hungarian music, conducted the Orchestra of St. Luke's at Carnegie Hall. At the time I found the work "pleasant enough but steeped in the traditions of the nineteenth century." Although Weiner did incorporate elements of his country's folk music into his compositions, he never delved into this tradition as deeply as his contemporaries Bartók and Kodály but instead used these elements more as a means to provide local color to his thoroughly orthodox compositions. Weiner was not one to take chances, either in his music or in his life. Once he had been appointed in 1908 to a teaching position at the Budapest Academy of Music he remained there until his retirement in 1949. Judging from the success of his pupils, teaching may have been his forte. The most prominent of Weiner's former students were the conductors Fritz Reiner and Georg Solti, both of whom went on to lead the Chicago Symphony. In fact, Solti's last recording, released posthumously in 1998, included a performance of the Serenade.
After intermission, the program resumed with Schumann's Overture, Scherzo and Finale in E major, Op. 52 (1841, rev. 1845). The piece is not often performed and I honestly can't remember the last time I heard it in concert. Part of this has to do with the perception of Schumann as an imperfect symphonic composer. (In his own time this may have had something to do with his total ineptitude as a conductor in leading these works.) The Overture, Scherzo and Finale receives even less respect than his four full length symphonies as it is often viewed as "incomplete" in its lack of a slow movement. Schumann himself termed it a sinfonetta, which carries with it the unfortunate implication that it is somehow more lightweight than his other works in this genre. In actuality, the omission works to the piece's advantage. Its very brevity makes it more taut and compact and gives to it a power and liveliness sometimes missing in his other orchestral works.
The evening ended with a performance of György Ligeti's Concert Românesc ("Romanian Concerto") (1951). This was the work I'd been most interested in hearing and I found it fascinating for its blending of two distinct styles. The first two movements were thoroughly grounded in Hungarian folk music and were more than a little reminiscent of Bartók's adaptations of this same source material. But the final two movements, those which infuriated Soviet censors to the extent that the work was banned after a single rehearsal and not performed publicly until 1971, looked ahead to the uncompromising experimental compositions Ligeti completed after his move to Cologne. The final movement, in particular, was filled with dissonance as individual instruments pursued distinct themes independently of one another. Though this forced melding of two different traditions might seem at first glance an uneasy combination, the piece actually worked quite well. I'm often surprised how appealing audiences find the work of this determinedly avant-garde composer, most especially on the two occasions I've heard his Mysteries of the Macabre. Friday evening was no exception and those in attendance applauded loudly at the Concerto's conclusion.
Bearing in mind that its talented members have only been playing together since September, the ensemble did a fine job as they moved from one very different piece to the next. It's a small group, more a chamber orchestra really, but definitely worth taking the time to hear. It's conductor, Zachary Schwartzman, appeared comfortable on the podium and fully in control, not an easy task when directing musicians who have had relatively little time to come together as a unit.
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